The Far Side of The Stars

by David Drake

All the lights aboard the Princess Cecile went out. Metal shrieked on the Goldenfels, the shutters sliding open to unmask the hidden turrets.

  "Wait for it!" Woetjans bawled from B Deck, audible up the forward companionways. "Don't nobody fucking move!"

  Daniel poised with his mouth and eyes both open. He heard the four guards outside the Sissie's main hatch run aboard, their boots clanging. Nothing more happened for a beat, a second beat—Captain Bertram wasn't acting rashly. Then, from hundreds of throats on the other side of the burned-over clearing, came the cry, "Urra!"

  Adele's wands flicked. All the lights and displays aboard the Princess Cecile returned to full brightness.

  "Initiating ignition sequence . . . ," Daniel said. His finger stabbed Execute on his virtual keypad, sending reaction mass to the thrusters to be stripped of electrons and expelled. "Now!"

  The Princess Cecile jolted as if eight trip-hammers had struck her hull in close sequence. Normally he'd have brought the thrusters up gently, equalizing the impulse into perfect unison before jumping them to real power. This wasn't a time for delicacy.

  Their gushing ions rebounded from the soil, some of it curling back in through the corvette's open hatches. Daniel's faceshield protected his eyes, but the skin of his throat and the backs of his hands tingled. It'd be worse on the lower decks, but he very much doubted that the spacers there cared any more than he did.

  Hydraulic jacks rammed the Sissie's hatches closed as quickly as possible, but that still took time. An Alliance spacer fired his handheld weapon, without orders or possibly against them. Slugs rang kling/kling/kling against the forward hull before a single ricochet moaned through an opening and across a compartment. Somebody cried out, but perhaps that was surprise rather than pain.

  The Princess Cecile shivered in balance: her bow a yard above the ground, her stern six inches lower. Daniel slid the vessel toward the river, using his manual controls because he didn't trust the software on a task with so many variables.

  The lower two-thirds of Daniel's display mapped the terrain in the corvette's direction of travel with sidebars for his gauges, but the top portion showed the Goldenfels in realtime. She'd unmasked both starboard lateral turrets, each mounting twin 15-cm guns as Daniel had surmised. They and the dorsal 10-cm cannon were aimed straight at the Princess Cecile's midpoint. A salvo would turn the corvette into a fireball visible from Morzanga's distant moon.

  The guns didn't fire. Half the Goldenfels' crew had rushed from her hatches in the fifteen seconds before Daniel lit his plasma thrusters. To avoid the Sissie's rainbow exhaust, members of the would-be assault party had thrown themselves down on the burned-over sward or turned hesitantly back toward their own vessel.

  Side-scatter from plasma cannon fired so close-by in an atmosphere would incinerate scores, perhaps hundreds, of unprotected Alliance spacers. Captain Bertram wouldn't sacrifice so many personnel just to stop a fleeing foe, if only because he knew the survivors would lynch him if he did.

  The assault force had left the Goldenfels by sliding down chutes of sheet plastic from access ports on the upper decks as well as from the main hatch, but they could return only by the regular boarding ramp. All the curses and threats from their officers couldn't get hundreds of weapon-burdened spacers up a single two-meter ramp quickly.

  The Princess Cecile slid into the slough where she'd first landed. The terrain between here and the clearing was regular, but there was enough variation that the Goldenfels was no longer in direct sight: the Sissie would be safe from plasma bolts so long as the two ships remained in the same relation to one another. Dorst had tacked a surveillance camera to a tree at the edge of the clearing before the Goldenfels landed; it continued to provide visuals for the top of Daniel's display.

  Daniel kept the Sissie just above the surface, her forward speed no more than a fast walk. She roared in a blanket of steam over the mouth of the slough to the river proper, which was nearly a mile wide at the confluence. The last of the assault party was boarding the Goldenfels; the Alliance vessel was closed up save for her main hatch.

  "Signals Officer," Daniel ordered, his hands busy with controlling his own ship. "Let the whole ship watch the visuals from the Goldenfels, out."

  An icon flickered, indicating that Adele had obeyed; she hadn't remembered to verbally acknowledge the command. RCN Signals School would have made Adele more conversant with military proprieties, but it wouldn't have taught her to do what she'd learned as a librarian—and those were the things on which the Princess Cecile and her crew depended.

  "Captain Bertram has just announced he's lighting his thrusters," Adele said over the ship's general channel.

  There was a rippling flash like chain lightning beneath the Goldenfels. The Alliance freighter lurched over on its side. Steam rose; for a few moments a stutter of matter/antimatter winked like a devil's eye. All twelve High Drive motors had devoured themselves, taking with them divots from the vessel's belly plates.

  Daniel brought the Princess Cecile to a standstill, hovering over the broad river in a ball of steam. Normally he wouldn't lift into orbit until he'd lowered his vessel to the surface, but that itself would be tricky under the present conditions.

  The Goldenfels was almost certainly out of action for the future indefinite, but "almost" wasn't the same as "certainly." Daniel didn't want to learn the hard way that Captain Bertram was an unusually lucky or resourceful officer.

  "Ship," Daniel ordered over the PA system and general push. "Prepare for liftoff. Over."

  He reviewed the pre-lift checklist, knowing that Chewning, Pasternak and the two midshipmen had already done the same thing. Three open hatches showed red when the display came up, but two winked out as he watched and the third—a C Deck bulk port—had shown a false positive once before.

  "Six, this is Four," said Pasternak from the Power Room. "I've got a team checking PC-17 but it may be five minutes. Over."

  "Roger, Four," Daniel said. "We're not in so much of a hurry that we need to chance dumping our whole atmosphere. Six out."

  Because of the necessary delay, Daniel leaned back and took a deep breath for the first time since he'd returned from the Goldenfels' banquet a lifetime ago. Grinning with a sudden thought, he resumed, "Ship, this is Six. Those of you who watched the Goldenfels a few minutes ago have seen what happens when a ship engages its High Drive motors at the bottom of an atmosphere."

  He glanced toward Adele. Before he could ask her to do so, she began to rerun the explosions as an imagery loop available to all crewmen on their helmets if they didn't have access to better displays.

  "I'm sure you'll all join with me in thanking our Signals Officer, Mistress Mundy," he continued, "who entered the Goldenfels' operating system and cross-connected it so that a signal to light the plasma thrusters would engage the High Drive instead."

  Daniel grinned broadly at the Signals Console, but Adele kept her head resolutely turned toward her display.

  "Hip-hip!" Daniel said.

  And the whole ship's company echoed, "Hurrah!"

  CHAPTER 20

  Adele came back to the bridge after showering and putting on a clean utility uniform. The attack console was empty; like Adele, Betts had gone off-duty when the Princess Cecile entered the Matrix. Neither a missileer nor a signals officer was of any use until the vessel returned to sidereal space. There was no need of a gunner, either, but Sun had remained at his board; he shot Adele a worried look.

  Daniel must've released the Klimovs from their quarters when the Sissie left sidereal space, because now they stood to either side of his console. Adele heard their raised voices while she was down the corridor, the Count saying, ". . . didn't intend when we engaged you that you'd use the opportunity to wage war on your national enemies!"

  "Captain Leary," Adele said sharply as she stepped to her console. "Pray help me adjust this knob on my couch, if you'd be so kind."

  Sun started to rise, his mouth open with an offer to help. Adele pointed her left index fin
ger at the gunner's face and gave him a look that would've melted rock. He subsided with realization dawning in his eyes as thought replaced reflex.

  "One moment, your excellency," Daniel said, rising from his couch and by doing so forcing the Count to back away. Daniel stepped to Adele's console, his lips pursed.

  "I see . . . ," he said. He deliberately kicked the knuckle of the hydraulic support with the heel of his boot. "I think you'll find it satisfactory now, Mundy."

  The Klimovs had trapped Daniel, perhaps by conscious plan, by standing in their anger so close to his couch that he'd have had to touch one or the other of them to get up. His unwillingness to escalate the encounter in that fashion meant he stayed pinned on his back for them to hector from above. By implicitly ignoring the Klimovs as she intruded on the equation, Adele had freed her friend.

  "Thank you, Captain," she said politely. Turning to Klimov before he could resume his harangue, she continued, "Count Klimov, while I was in the Goldenfels' data bank for other purposes, I downloaded all files dealing with the Princess Cecile or her personnel. Among other things, they indicated that Captain Bertram was able to track you because you discussed your plans with locals on Todos Santos and Tegeli. This of course is your right as owner of the Princess Cecile; but given Bertram's animus against you, I thought you should be made aware of the risks your talk created."

  "Animus against me?" Klimov shrieked. "Animus against Cinnabar, you mean!"

  "Not at all," Adele said calmly, setting her data unit on the edge of her console and bringing out the wands. "Bertram was furious that you'd cheated him—outcheated him, I gather—at cards. Reading between the lines, I suspect that he was gambling with government funds and that he expects very serious personal consequences on his return to Pleasaunce unless he gets the money back."

  "That's a lie!" Klimov said.

  "Georgi!" shouted his wife, her voice rising. She stepped in front of the Count, her hands pushing him back. She shot Adele a glance over her shoulder; there was real fear in her eyes. "He didn't mean that!"

  It struck Adele, standing as still as a deck stanchion, that Valentina knew more than Adele had ever told her. There were plenty of people aboard who might've talked, of course. The Sissies were proud of their Signals Officer: the lady who'd as soon shoot you as look at you, who knew everything, and who never missed. . . .

  "Count Klimov," Adele said in a general silence of fear, "I'd sent a prepared search signal into the Goldenfels' computer during the banquet. Yesterday evening and night I had time to analyze the results while we were waiting for Captain Bertram to attack. I'd be pleased to show you the information in both raw and processed form."

  She cleared her throat. "Now," she went on. "I believe you started to say something which I was too abstracted to hear. If you'd care to repeat your statement, we can proceed as the situation dictates."

  Valentina pinched her husband's lips closed and whispered viciously into his left ear, watching Adele sidelong. Klimov stared at Adele, nodded, and then moved his wife's hand away from his mouth.

  "Your pardon, Lady Mundy," he said, bowing. "I've completely forgotten what I started to say. Knowing me, it was probably something very foolish anyway."

  "Yes," said Valentina, glaring at her husband. "It was."

  Daniel cleared his throat, his eyes on a bulkhead, then turned to the Klimovs with a smile as though seeing them for the first time today. "That's all in the past, of course," he said, "but it does bring up an associated point. I don't believe the Goldenfels will be pursuing us any longer—"

  Adele glanced at the Klimovs. While in their stateroom they could've accessed the visuals of the Alliance vessel rolling over on its side, but she wasn't sure they'd done so.

  "—but other Alliance vessels may be searching for them. Any such ship that arrives on Morzanga and learns what happened will become a new problem for us. I suggest that we not leave via the ports from which we arrived."

  "What choice is there?" the Klimovna asked. "A cul-de-sac, you called this."

  "Yes, with the exception of the passage Commander Bergen traversed," Daniel said, nodding. "For part of the way, that route requires travelling between rather than through bubble universes. I don't honestly believe anyone but Uncle Stacey could have opened the route. I hope—I believe—that using his log books, I can retrace it, but I won't pretend there isn't serious risk."

  "You think John Tsetzes tried this passage and was destroyed, not so?" Valentina said.

  Daniel nodded. "I think that's possible," he said. "After finding the copy of the Earth Diamond on Morzanga and no evidence that Tsetzes ever left this cul-de-sac, I think in fact that it's very probable. We have the advantage of Uncle Stacey's logs over him, of course."

  The Count looked at his wife, then back to Daniel. "If it's so risky," he said querulously, "why would we do it?"

  "Because the risk is less than that of being shot by the people you and your card tricks put about our heads, Georgi!" Valentina said; summing up the situation in much the way Adele would've done herself, and in an equally peevish tone. "That's what you mean, Daniel, isn't it?"

  "Yes, that's what I mean," Daniel agreed. "I'm not seriously concerned about meeting Alliance ships here in the North, but . . . this is a lawless region at the best of times. An Alliance vessel which found the Goldenfels and offered a reward on Todos Santos would get many takers. Whereas if we first make landfall at New Delphi, the planet with the tree oracle you know, I think we'll have outdistanced potential trouble."

  "Faugh, do what you please," the Count said abruptly. He turned on his heel. "I'm going to play cards in the wardroom."

  Valentina watched her husband stalk off the bridge. "Cards and women," she said in a tone of disgust. "Other men manage to amuse themselves without risking the lives of everybody around them!"

  She shrugged. "I have notes from Morzanga to organize," she said as she walked toward the companionway. "Men are all fools!"

  Daniel smiled faintly. Adele raised an eyebrow. "I hope you don't expect me to argue the point," she said. "Of course, I don't have a high opinion of women either."

  "Mr. Chewning," Daniel said, cueing his helmet. "You have the watch. I'll return to the bridge in three hours, when we're ready to drop back into sidereal space for a final star sight. Six out."

  He grinned broadly at Adele. "I anticipated the owners' agreement, you see," he explained. "We'll be attempting the passage shortly. Until then, I'm going to take a nap."

  "But it's only three hours, you said?" Adele said. She pursed her lips but took care not to frown.

  "Yes, well, it's not long," Daniel said, his grin becoming rueful. "But you see, I'll be on the truck of Antenna Dorsal A the whole time we're in the passage. Which will be thirty-four hours, if all goes well."

  * * *

  Daniel stood at the top of the leading mast of the dorsal row, the point farthest from the Princess Cecile's hull. There wasn't—there couldn't be—a more gorgeous and awesome display than the blaze of the hundred universes now beating down on him. He didn't feel like a starship captain or a Cinnabar nobleman, he felt like the Lord God Almighty. It was all he could do to fight down the urge to raise his arm and shout, "Let there be light!"

  The Princess Cecile was a universe of her own, a fragment of sidereal space-time thrust through universes by the pressure of Casimir radiation, the one true constant which permeated every bubble of the Matrix and the immaterial spaces separating those bubbles. Her antennas and yards stretched molecule-thin sails of conductive fabric. Their area, angle and electric charge determined the vessel's course within the Matrix and therefore her location when she returned to the sidereal universe. The navigational computers which plotted those relationships were the most powerful available to humanity, but even so a course computation was likely to require an hour or more.

  Daniel eyed the heavens' pattern of color and intensity. He knew the next programmed correction: adjustment by ten percent of the maincourses of all twelve lateral ma
sts while the dorsal and ventral sails remained the same.

  That was what the computer said, based on observed gradients . . . and if they followed that program, the Princess Cecile would drive herself into a bubble where a photon had three orders of magnitude greater energy than that of the universe where men had built her. She might survive those pressures long enough for her automatic systems to dump her back into the sidereal universe . . . but the chances were that she wouldn't survive, and there was no chance at all that she'd be able to proceed with the course the computer had planned.

  Daniel raised his right arm as an attention signal; the quartermaster, waiting at the semaphore control panel at the base of Dorsal Two, gestured back. Daniel's arms made a quick series of signs as precise as the movements of a trapeze artist and as certain to bring disaster if bungled.

  The quartermaster dialed the new orders into his mechanical computer, then pulled the long lever on the side. The arms of semaphores at twelve locations across the Sissie's hull sprang to life. A person anywhere on the outer surface of the vessel could see at least one of the stations.

  Only mechanical and hydraulic equipment was used to control operations on the deck of a ship in the Matrix. A radio signal or even the field generated by an electrical conductor within the bubble of sidereal space was enough to throw a vessel off-course to a literally incalculable degree. A fiber-optic cable didn't set up a field—but neither could it do any work at the far end: that would require an electrical booster with the same attendant problems.

  Cables and hydraulic lines worked. Oh, they stretched and broke and leaked and sometimes froze, but for the most part they worked. And the riggers worked, the human beings who used their eyes to spot trouble and their muscles to correct it; knowing that if they misjudged they might drift into a bubble universe whose very matter was hostile to them.

  The sails of the lateral antennas began to skew counterclockwise, coming slightly closer to alignment with the axis of the ship. In response to Daniel's order, riggers moved across the Sissie's hull to the capstan at the base of each dorsal mast. Daniel felt through his boots the vibration of pulleys turning, shifting the set of Dorsal One's lower course as other riggers were adjusting the sails of the antennas behind his in the file.