The Way to Glory

by David Drake

  "Ah," Adele said. If she simply stared at his image staring at her image, he might assume she disapproved of his plan. She didn't disapprove, exactly, but neither would she pretend she understood. "Daniel, I—all the crew, of course, all of us would support any decision you made. But I honestly can't imagine that anyone would think that the part this cutter has already taken in the matter is insufficient. And to put your career at risk like this is . . ."

  She let her voice trail off. It wasn't that she couldn't find words to finish the thought, but those she found all had too much negative emotional loading for her to be comfortable using them in the present instance.

  "Yes, I take your point," Daniel said. "The thing is, Adele . . ."

  He smiled with rueful sadness, then continued, "I think the Hermes should have a representative at the conclusion of the matter. She was, she was a good—I know a ship is just a machine, a lot of machines working together, but the Hermes deserves to be in at the kill! I think."

  "Yes," said Adele, understanding at last. It was always the emotional factors that she overlooked; and which blindsided her as a result. "All right. And I'll come aboard the Garnet with you."

  "I don't think that's wise," Daniel said, frowning in surprise. "It's not your job, you see, and—"

  "You have your duties, Captain Leary," Adele said. "But don't try to tell Mundy of Chatsworth what hers are."

  "Ah," said Daniel. "Ah. My mistake."

  He cleared his throat and went on, "Yes. I think I'll use the time before we come alongside to go over attack plans with Sun. The two of us probably have a higher opinion of a cutter's combat effectiveness than Admiral Milne does, you know."

  But not higher, Adele thought as Daniel linked his console to the gunner's attack board, than the Alliance commodore does. . . .

  CHAPTER 28

  Yang System

  Adele was amused to see Daniel start back as he stepped through the airlock onto the Garnet's A Deck. A vividly chartreuse flying lizard banked upward within a hand's breadth of his nose to snatch a cockroach off the ceiling. On Sinmary Port he'd been too busy to visit the ships which had been on station for some time.

  "This way, Lieutenant," Lieutenant Farschenning said. He didn't sound hostile, but he was keeping an evident distance in his voice. "The Admiral's taken the officers' wardroom for her quarters."

  "Very well," Daniel said briskly. "Officer Mundy will be accompanying me."

  Farschenning glanced at Adele and raised an eyebrow. Adele stared back with a deliberate absence of emotion.

  The aide shrugged. "As you will," he said and led the way sternward.

  "How do you happen to be aboard the Garnet, Farschenning?" Daniel said, asking the question that'd occurred to Adele also.

  "Ah," said Farschenning. "Admiral Milne asked me to become her Flag Lieutenant when Lieutenant Pontefract returned to Cinnabar. He had family business there."

  Ah indeed, Adele thought. Milne had to get Pontefract off-planet after the debacle in the Gallery for the same reason she'd sent Daniel to Yang.

  The Garnet trembled with the buzz of its High Drive running at low output to create the illusion of gravity. As Adele followed the men down the main corridor, she felt the throb of a deeper note as well: the cruiser's pumps had begun to transfer reaction mass to Cutter 614 through a high-pressure version of the flexible tubing which allowed her and Daniel to cross between the ships without their suits.

  Adele was glad they'd come over by tube rather than by hauling themselves along a line. Even an ordinary air suit was bulky within a vessel's tight spaces, and it was uncomfortable as well. Adele found it so, at least.

  They passed three technicians going in the other direction, two of them wheeling an arc welder. Adele grimaced, wishing that she'd had an opportunity to change or at least clean up. The Garnet was on a combat patrol, so everybody aboard wore utilities just as she and Daniel did. The cruiser's personnel had been able to bathe regularly, however, and their uniforms weren't caked with weeks of body oils.

  Adele smiled minusculely. She'd be Mundy of Chatsworth if she were stripped naked and stood on a gallows. And Daniel would be Daniel, grinning and very probably figuring out a way to escape with the executioner's pants and his wife besides. If she was young enough, and pretty enough, and had the IQ of a parakeet.

  The wardroom didn't have a proper entryway, so the Admiral's clerk sat at a small workstation bolted to the deck to the side of the hatch. The clerk glanced down the corridor and saw them coming; he spoke via intercom, using his helmet's active cancelling even though he was talking to the Admiral only ten feet away.

  "Send him in, Craig," Admiral Milne boomed without waiting for Lieutenant Farschenning to announce them formally. "And then get out!"

  The clerk stepped around his workstation and met them in the corridor. "She says go on in, Lieutenant," he said in a low voice, nodding toward the hatch behind him. He looked surprised as Adele gestured to Daniel, then entered the office ahead of him.

  "Who the bloody Hell told you you could come in here?" Milne said when she saw that someone was accompanying Daniel. "I'll deal with you when I'm damned good and ready to deal with you!"

  The Admiral was at the full-sized console which had replaced the wardroom table; a bunk was fixed behind a screen against the rear bulkhead. She'd obviously been angry already, and Adele's presence threatened to turn her apoplectic.

  "Close the hatch, Lieutenant," Adele said to Daniel in a thin, cold voice. When it clunked against its coaming she continued, "I'm afraid you'll have to see me now, Admiral. My information has bearing on the safety of the Republic, and it's time sensitive."

  "Have you both gone mad?" Milne said. "If it's time sensitive, then why didn't you transmit it to me hours ago as you were ordered to do?"

  "Lieutenant Leary didn't transmit the information because it was under my control," Adele said, seating herself on one of the metal chairs facing the console. She put her personal data unit on her knees. "And I wouldn't permit him to take such an action because it might compromise my sources and methods. My superiors in Xenos won't be pleased that I chose to make this information available to you directly instead of going through them, and I don't want to think of how they'd react if I broadcast it openly."

  She was exaggerating, but not a great deal. People whose business is information dislike having it pass out of their control. Regardless of policy, though, Adele knew that Mistress Sand would support any decisions she made in the field. Admiral Milne would lose if she insisted on making a fight of it.

  Milne grimaced. "Go on, then," she said. "You're here."

  Adele had planned to link her unit to the Admiral's console because the larger display would have higher resolution, but on reflection she decided to let the little box project the data directly. Milne was dangerously angry already; blithely taking over her supposedly-shielded equipment might push her over the edge.

  "The Alliance convoy of which Lieutenant Ganse informed you . . ." Adele said. She led off the visuals with an image of the Scheer, showing the aftermost third of the cruiser's hull stripped clean. A sidebar of data formed in the air beside the ship, expanded so that Milne could theoretically read it but therefore fuzzy. "Has been attacked and crippled."

  She began to shuffle through the remaining ships of the convoy, starting with those which had received the worst damage. The Bloemfontein made a particularly striking image: a forward antenna severed by one of Vesey's rockets had managed to wrap its shrouds several times around the transport's hull, bringing down most of the rest of the rigging in the process.

  Love was a hot emotion to Vesey, something Adele herself could accept as a concept without having the least notion of what it meant to one who felt it. It was rather like belief in God, she supposed. What happened to Vesey's love now that its object had been reduced to an expanding ball of gas? Did it continue, the way light spreads from a burned-out pinch of magnesium? Love infinitely attenuated but never completely gone until the universe i
tself died. . . .

  "I'll transfer this information to the Garnet as soon as I've checked your database security, Admiral," Adele said, "but I wanted you to see it first. You'll note that it includes not only the vessels' damage reports but also full particulars of their crews and cargoes."

  Milne wasn't looking at her any more. The Admiral's eyes went from the imagery to Daniel. "This is real, Leary?" she said. "This isn't some sort of sham dummied up on a computer? And you did it?"

  "It's no sham, sir," Daniel said quietly. He remained standing instead of taking the other chair, his back straight and his hands crossed at the small of his back. "The Hermes and her flotilla carried out a very successful series of attacks, though there were casualties. The tender was lost, and two cutters were lost with their complete crews. I regret to report that Commander Slidell himself commanded one of those cutters."

  "Slidell did this?" Milne said, looking puzzled and with the edge of anger that uncertainty brings out in defensive people. "Ganse said Slidell'd left you in command of the Hermes. Did he return, then?"

  "There were two options for delaying the Alliance convoy until you could arrive with the squadron," Daniel said with great calm. "Captain Slidell chose to take the very dangerous task of attacking alone in the Vela Maun System, leaving me responsible for executing the second attack with the remainder of the flotilla."

  The Admiral's face worked as though she were swallowing a walnut, shell and all. She looked from Daniel to Adele. "You've got the coordinates?" she said. "Of where the convoy is now?"

  "Yes sir," Daniel said, drawing Milne's eyes back like a gun turret rotating. "It was an eighteen-hour forty-minute run for us, but I think it'll require at least another half hour going back because of the way the gradients were shifting. Ah, that's if you were to make the voyage in a single stage, which—"

  "Which would be a bloody disaster, since there's no way of guaranteeing that three ships arrive perfectly together over that distance," Milne said snappishly. "Don't get above yourself, Leary. I don't need a lieutenant to tell me not to send my squadron piecemeal against a pair of destroyers and a cruiser that's still got teeth. We'll rendezvous a light hour out from the target, then go in simultaneously."

  "And it's four ships if you please, Admiral," Daniel said. "Cutter 614 is ready to carry out her part. Our tanks will be completely full again in a few minutes."

  "Good God, Lieutenant!" Milne said. "A cutter doesn't have any business in this."

  Her eyes narrowed. "You're just after a share of the prize money, that's it, isn't it?" she said in a challenging voice. More calmly she went on, "Well, I'll grant you've earned it. I'll place you aboard the Garnet here as Second Lieutenant. And place you too, Mundy. I gather you're not too pure to take prize money? Even though you've made such a point of not being under naval discipline."

  "I regret that you consider me undisciplined, Admiral," Adele said. "To be honest, my family has never been greatly concerned with amassing money."

  "And I believe that a prize court," Daniel said, verbally stepping into the breach, "would find that because the convoy attacks are all part of a single action, shares will go to the crews of the ships involved in any of the three phases. Still, if 614's presence will make it easier for Captain Slidell's heirs to collect his share of the award, so much the better. He was a skilled and inspiring officer."

  Admiral Milne stared at Daniel. For the first time since they came aboard the Garnet, Adele was doubtful about what was going on in the Admiral's mind.

  At last Milne said, "All right, Leary. I'm not an expert in cutter operations and you've demonstrated that you are. I suppose you've worked out a course back to the convoy?"

  "Ah, yes sir," Daniel said. He'd thumped his heels together and was standing at attention. "For Cutter 614 alone, of course, but I believe it'd be perfectly suitable for heavier ships as well."

  "I believe it will also," Milne said with a touch of sarcasm. "How long would it take you to add a waypoint a light-hour from the target?"

  Daniel shrugged. "Well, sir," he said. "Possibly ten minutes with an astrogational computer."

  Milne rose from her console. "Use this one," she said, gesturing Daniel to the seat she'd just vacated. "And Lieutenant? One other thing."

  "Yes sir?" Daniel said. He was looking at the keyboard, not the Admiral speaking to him.

  "When you've got the course plotted, I'd thank you for the loan of your signals officer to transmit it to the other ships," Milne said, nodding to Adele. "The Gold Dust Squadron doesn't get a lot of practice in group operations, and I'd regret for there to be a communications failure at this juncture."

  "I would be pleased . . ." Daniel said. "If my crew could assist the Admiral's staff in this matter."

  He looked toward Adele through the shimmer of coherent light and smiled. To Adele it was as if a bust carved from fire opal were grinning at her.

  * * *

  Lieutenant Farschenning and the clerk, Craig, waited in the corridor just outside the Admiral's quarters. They'd heard the hatch undog and had time to compose their features as rigidly as those of a pair of statues.

  Daniel grinned and said, "The Admiral will probably want you both. There'll be a general order going out shortly. Lieutenant, we can find our own way back to the cutter."

  The two staff personnel stepped into the cabin looking stupefied. Well, Daniel had been there, but he found the results of the interview a little hard to fathom also.

  "Daniel?" Adele murmured as they strode down the corridor. "What will happen when we reach the convoy? That is, what's the battle plan?"

  "The heavy ships will launch immediately at the Scheer," Daniel said. It was a reasonable question, but Adele didn't generally take an interest in tactics. "Mind, I can only say what I'd do, but it's pretty cut and dried. The Scheer's a sitting duck because of the damage she's taken, but she's still extremely dangerous. She'll be able to get off three, possibly four missile salvoes before she's destroyed."

  Daniel weighed possibilities for a moment, then smiled wryly and continued, "If the Scheer has a competent missileer who concentrates on one target, we'll lose that ship. If the missileer spreads his salvoes—which he shouldn't—but gets lucky, as everybody sometimes does, we could lose more than one ship. And while that's going on, 614 will be trying not to stop an eight-inch plasma bolt."

  He shrugged. "The heavy ships will switch their attentions to the destroyers as soon as the first salvo takes care of the cruiser," he said. "We'll have surprise on our side since we'll learn roughly where they are when we regroup an hour out, but we'll be arriving before the light of our own appearance. Even so it'll be a fight. Which—"

  He grinned.

  "—is what we joined the RCN to do, of course. Some of us, at any rate."

  They'd almost reached the airlock to which the transfer tube was coupled. The hatch was sealed while the tube wasn't in use, as was 614's airlock on the other end. Barnes and Dasi waited in the corridor, talking with two of the cruiser's personnel.

  "What will the civilian vessels do?" Adele said, perceptibly slowing her pace. "Will they just surrender?"

  Daniel halted. He didn't see where Adele was going with this line of questioning, but it obviously wasn't idle. "The Commodore will order them to scatter," he said, "but most of them won't get far. All the officers in the Gold Dust Squadron have experience in tracking ships in the Matrix. That's one advantage in the constant anti-pirate operations."

  The disadvantage—which Daniel hadn't chosen to mention—was that the squadron's missileers weren't as experienced as those of vessels which specialized in fighting enemy warships. He'd thought of offering to take over as missileer on one of the heavy ships, but for a great many reasons he'd held his tongue. He'd started this battle with the Hermes and her flotilla; that's the way he'd end it as well.

  "What would happen," Adele said, "if the Alliance commodore saw that the Cornelwood and three other cruisers were a light-hour out, preparing to attack?"

/>   "The Cornelwood won't be ready for action in a month," Daniel said, unintendedly harsh. "Maybe six months. And they won't see us, because we'll arrive through the Matrix before the light gets to them."

  "If, Lieutenant," Adele said. "What if they saw that?"

  Daniel felt his face go blank. "The Commodore'd order the convoy to scatter immediately," he said. "Including the destroyers, it'd be suicide for them to stay. And he'd surrender the Scheer, since for the short time she'd be in action, her missiles wouldn't be able to get through the Cornelwood's defensive battery."

  "From a light-hour out, Daniel," Adele said with a cold smile, "I could convince even myself that Cutter 614 is a heavy cruiser."

  "Good God Almighty!" Daniel said as he turned around. "Come on, Officer Mundy! We need to see the Admiral again!"

  CHAPTER 29

  Sinmary Port on Nikitin

  Adele, carrying in her right hand the decryption module she'd been moving from ship to ship since the Hermes made its final attack, stepped from the airlock of Cutter 610 which had ferried the last of the Scheer's prize crew to the surface. She walked toward the quay, keeping her eyes focused on Daniel's shoulderblades. She hoped that it would keep her from noticing the way the catwalk bounced and quivered underfoot. Perhaps it did help—some.

  Adele knew she wouldn't drown if she fell into the slip: even holding the module she could stay afloat, and she was willing to bet that Daniel, Hogg, and probably Tovera as well swam like fish. She would, however, feel like a complete fool—which was worse, of course.

  The air was humid enough to wring out, and it smelled like a swamp. It was the first time in . . . the first time since Cutter 614 lifted from Yang six weeks earlier that Adele had breathed air that hadn't been bottled and chemically scrubbed. She found she liked the change, though it wasn't a matter of great import to her.

  Daniel glanced over his shoulder. "Eight of the ships in the harbor are prizes from Bromley," he said in a voice only Tovera, directly behind Adele on the catwalk, was likely to overhear. "Not the Zerbe, though, so we've beat somebody getting here. The light cruiser's the Galatea from the Home Squadron, and she must be being used for a courier. And there's a brand new 2000-ton fast transport. She's got antennas long enough for something three times her displacement."