The Far Side of The Stars

by David Drake

  "Woetjans, both watches," Daniel ordered. He hated to send riggers out while the ship was accelerating, but sometimes you don't have a choice. "Rig the maincourses of Dorsal A and Starboard A, both at 29 degrees starboard inclination. Move it, spacers!"

  The riggers were spread through the ship doing damage control, but at least they were suited up. Woetjans would have the sails set within minutes, giving the Goldenfels maneuvering way from the moment it entered the Matrix. The Bluecher had Fleet-standard optical pickups, as good as those of the RCN, but nobody at 400,000 miles could tell an angle of twenty-nine degrees from thirty-one or twenty-seven. That was a wide enough variation that the heavy cruiser would have to quarter the region instead of landing directly on top of her wallowing prey, and only the very best astrogators could hope to follow a trail through the Matrix that was hours old.

  There were pirate captains who managed the trick regularly, of course. It would've been child's play for Uncle Stacey, and Lieutenant Daniel Leary had managed it also. If the Bluecher had a commander of that quality, the Goldenfels wasn't going to escape—and she wasn't going to fight a successful battle against a heavy cruiser.

  Daniel smiled as his fingers hammered additional calculations into his computer. Which didn't mean that they wouldn't fight. When he had leisure he'd check the status of the Goldenfels' weaponry, not that he expected to like what he learned.

  Adele inserted another text at the bottom of his display:

  The Bluecher's commander is Capt. Rafael Semmes. Do you wish details of his service?

  "Thank you, Adele," Daniel said on his two-way link. He continued to type; he wasn't familiar with this region. He'd studied the return to the rendezvous with the Princess Cecile, but he didn't want to head back directly in case they were pursued. "The identification is sufficient. I'm aware of the gentleman."

  Now he was quite sure they'd be pursued. Daniel didn't remember the name of every Alliance officer he'd heard in passing, but when Oliver Semmes mentioned at the funeral that he and his brother Rafael had met Uncle Stacey while they were serving under the great Captain Lorenz—that Daniel had remembered. Lorenz gave the officers under him the opportunity to become first-class astrogators—

  And if they failed to do so, Lorenz railroaded them out of the Fleet. Rafael Semmes had survived.

  Well, perhaps Daniel would get lucky with a missile. And the Goldenfels mounted heavy guns as well. Maybe there was a way.

  A red legend flashed onto Daniel's display:

  SA Main set.

  Adele had relayed the signal from Woetjans on the hull and highlighted it.

  As soon as the dorsal sail was—

  Another legend, this time a message from Pasternak:

  Reaction mass tanks at 47%. Switch to High Drive?

  Adele must be filtering all his communications. It wasn't RCN policy, but it was the right thing now with Adele Mundy making the choices and not enough time to do half of what had to be done. . . .

  Ordinarily a ship switched from plasma thrusters to its much more efficient High Drive as soon as it rose out of an atmosphere. Though Gehenna was a large satellite, its atmosphere was thin enough to be called hard vacuum for most purposes, but the limited power available from the jury-rigged High Drive and the present desperate need made Daniel hesitate.

  Woetjans signalled DA Main set.

  "Ship, this is Six," Daniel said, shutting down the thrusters. "Prepare to enter the Matrix. Entering Matrix—"

  He'd set the switches minutes ago, a lifetime ago; he'd set the switches as soon as the Alliance heavy cruiser dropped back into normal space. He pushed the Execute button with the tips of two fingers, hard enough to have shoved a hatch closed. A virtual keyboard didn't care about pressure, but Daniel Leary wasn't a man for half measures.

  "—now!"

  Daniel felt the shudder of the vessel slipping into a bubble of normal space driving through space-times more alien than the heart of a sun. The sensation was by now long familiar, but it wasn't and probably would never become comfortable. The physicists said that nothing changed—the Goldenfels herself and the volume bounded by the tips of her antennas remained a part of the universe in which the vessel was built and her crew was born.

  The physicists were wrong. A one-time passenger could have told them that, let alone veteran spacers with hundreds or thousands of hours in the Matrix. The ship might remain part of normal space, but something interpenetrated it. You could feel the difference, a scratchy sensation like wearing another man's skin beneath your own, and sometimes you saw things.

  Once Daniel had seen a group of humans shambling down a corridor identical to that of the Swiftsure, the ship on which he was in training. They were naked and blank eyed. Behind them strolled a feathered biped with compound eyes; it stared at Daniel in shock and horror before vanishing with its charges as suddenly as an image tilts away in a mirror.

  Sometimes you saw things that weren't real. Things that Daniel told himself couldn't ever have been real.

  "Ship, this is Six," he said. His face had fallen into a mechanical smile at that memory—that false memory. When he realized, his expression turned into wry self-amusement. "I've programmed our course. I'm going onto the hull now to supervise the rig. In seven hours we'll drop back to take a star sighting, then proceed to rendezvous with the Princess Cecile. I estimate that'll take another eighteen and a half hours."

  He took a deep breath, then added, "Sissies, there's a possibility that we're not done fighting just yet. You deserve a chance to rest, but we all know that life isn't fair. If things work out as they may despite my best efforts, I'm confident that Alliance cruiser will know it's been in a fight. Six out."

  He'd check the armament, but not just now. . . .

  Daniel started to get up from his couch; the shock harness still gripped him. He touched the release stud and rose again, smiling at himself. He was more tired—more wrung out—than he'd realized. Well, he'd get some rest when he could, but that wouldn't be till they took their star-sight in seven hours time . . . and maybe not even then.

  "Mistress Vesey, you have the conn," Daniel said, walking toward the airlock. He wouldn't be on the hull long, so he wasn't going to bother donning a rigging suit.

  The sailcloth patch in the corridor ceiling quivered; well, the Power Room crew could switch to damage control duties now that the ship was in the Matrix. Vesey would take care of that without being told.

  He stepped into the airlock. Adele was with him. Daniel looked at her in surprise. She had no business out on the hull.

  But to tell the truth, neither did he: Woetjans could handle the rigging without the captain on the hull to watch. Daniel's presence was a matter of moral support, that was all. And so was Adele's, of course.

  Daniel beamed and nodded to her. He had a good team. The Goldenfels might be short handed, but she had the best crew she'd carried since commissioning, of that he was sure.

  And if the Bluecher caught them, as the Bluecher might very well—it'd be just as he'd told his crew: when it was over, they'd know they'd been in a fight.

  * * *

  When Adele thought about it, this short run from Gehenna had been one of the most physically uncomfortable voyages she'd made. When she wasn't thinking about it, though—and she hadn't thought about it except fleetingly—the discomfort really hadn't made any difference. She'd been busy, assimilating the enormous lump of data she'd scooped from the systems of Lorenz Base when the Alliance forces were bypassing communications safeguards during battle.

  Most of what she'd gathered wasn't obviously useful, but if Daniel ever wanted to know—for example—the name of the leading rigger on the Bluecher's starboard watch, she'd have him the information in a few flicks of her wands. And you never knew what Daniel would need.

  Rigging suits were designed for extended use, but most of the crew—Adele included—were in general duty airsuits instead. Fortunately the damage control parties had managed to keep pressure in one of the heads, th
ough they'd had to jury-rig a sailcloth airlock to do so. And if they hadn't—

  If they hadn't, worse things happen in wartime. That was one of the many RCN cliches Adele had come to understand were the basic underpinnings of any capable military force: the ability to look at situations and call them by their right names, but still to function.

  Adele smiled as her wands moved, segregating files involving Alliance contacts with members of the Commonwealth government and bureaucracy. Mistress Sand would want to know that information, but she probably wouldn't want it spread about Cinnabar generally or even the whole RCN. Many times information was most effective when it wasn't used. The same was true of any other weapon.

  "Ship, this is Six," Daniel said. He sounded alert, but his voice had an edge as ragged as that of hack-sawed steel. "We'll be transferring to the Princess Cecile in orbit, Sissies. Our riggers will cross first and set lines, then the rest of us. Those who're less familiar with vacuum—"

  Adele grimaced. She counted as "less familiar" and was awkward besides, but some of the Power Room crew had never been outside a ship above the atmosphere.

  "—will be tied to more experienced personnel. Let me emphasize: we don't have a lot of time, which is why I'm making this transfer in orbit rather than on the ground as I'd intended and Mr. Chewning expects. But nobody gets left behind, Sissies. We've come this far, we don't leave anybody behind. Six out."

  When she looked down the corridor, Adele saw a Tech Two from the Power Room marshalling the other six personnel from the port watch. The starboard watch was on duty, so these superfluous crewmen would be the first to follow the riggers across to the Princess Cecile.

  "Six, this is Six-one," said Vesey on the command channel. "We're scheduled to return to normal space in one minute. Do you have any further orders for me, over?"

  "Bring us toward the Princess Cecile on thrusters at one-gee acceleration, Mistress Vesey," Daniel said. His voice was getting back to normal, like a door that doesn't squeal as loudly after use knocks the rust off its hinges. "I'll take the conn for the final approach. When I do so, get yourself and your people up on the hull for transfer. Break."

  Adele glanced over her shoulder toward Daniel. She couldn't see his face because of his rigging suit, but she could easily imagine the smile with which he contemplated the future. It struck her as odd that Daniel genuinely expected to succeed at whatever risky plan he embarked on, and that his belief in success rubbed off on everybody following him—even gloomy cynics like Signals Officer Adele Mundy.

  That general, completely illogical, expectation was at least part of the reason why Daniel and those he commanded usually did win through—if not by the path he'd chosen, then by another path that opened for them because they'd kept their heads when all Hell was breaking loose.

  "Ship, this is Six," Daniel said. "We're returning to normal space—"

  Adele felt every atom of her body turn inside out. The experience was horrible, worse than any pain and almost as bad as what she felt when leaving sidereal space.

  "—now!"

  She had her work; that drew Adele back from disorientation at once. Occasionally she wondered how people who didn't lose themselves in their work managed; but part of her noted that they didn't manage very well, and the other part of her dismissed those people as being beneath a sensible person's concern.

  There were various ways to find a starship orbiting an uninhabited planet like the one above which the Goldenfels reentered sidereal space. Because Adele was a signals officer, and because the Goldenfels was a spy ship outfitted with receivers just as sensitive as those Mistress Sand's people had installed on the Princess Cecile, she simply searched for RF sources.

  Even with its main transmitter shut down, a starship is a bright emitter across the radio spectrum. Every electric motor and generator, every current-carrying wire, and even the half-watt transceivers in the crew's commo helmets, was a broadcaster as far as Adele's equipment was concerned.

  She found a vessel just visible above the edge of the nameless, dun-colored planet, pinged its identification transponder with a modulated laser to make sure that it was the Princess Cecile and not an unpleasant surprise, and said over the command channel as she locked her laser communicator to follow its target, "Captain, this is signals. I have a channel open to the Princess Cecile if you'd like to talk to her. Over."

  Sun turned at his console to stare at her, and she heard Vesey gasp in amazement. Tovera, seated on the other side of the holographic display, gave as broad a grin as Adele ever recalled seeing on her face.

  Which was slightly embarrassing, because Adele had to admit that she'd intended precisely that result. She'd prepared her search protocols long before the Goldenfels came out of the Matrix. She'd executed them as quickly as possible, not because of the danger the ship was in but because she consciously and deliberately wanted to astound everybody with her competence.

  "Goldenfels Six to RCS Princess Cecile," Daniel said, taking over the transmitter without wasting time responding to Adele's implicit boasting. "Hold your orbit, Mr. Chewning, we'll match velocities with you in thirteen, I say again one-three, minutes. And Mr. Chewning—get your antennas raised. We'll be transferring personnel in vacuum rather than setting down, and I want to be able to get out of the region immediately upon accomplishing that. Goldenfels over."

  Adele felt the ship shifting, flexing a little under push of the plasma thrusters. Ordinarily that was disquieting, but she found it oddly reassuring after the omnidirectional pressure of the Matrix.

  There was what seemed to Adele an extremely long delay. She realized that though she'd—though her equipment had—driven a line of sight to the Princess Cecile, she had no idea of how far the corvette was from them nor in which direction it was orbiting. Had it gone behind . . . ? No, there it was, the signal source still highlighted on her display.

  "Good God, sir!" came Chewning's voice. "That is, Sissie Six to Goldenfels Six, we'll hold as ordered and get our antennas up. Ah, welcome back, sir. Sissie out."

  He was sending through a microwave transmitter, presumably because nobody on the Princess Cecile had been able to lock a laser on the Goldenfels to respond in that much more secure fashion. Adele pursed her lips; she'd do something about training as soon as she was back aboard the corvette.

  There was a good deal of bustle behind her. The power room techs were going through the airlock to the hull.

  Tovera had risen to her feet, wearing a sub-machine gun slung across her chest. Adele wondered whether she'd be able to use the weapon effectively while wearing an air suit and decided that, being Tovera, she probably would. Tovera was as soulless as a machine, but she had the virtues of a machine as well. The things she was programmed to do, she did superbly well regardless of circumstances.

  Adele continued her work, dumping the information she'd gathered on the Goldenfels into the Princess Cecile's computer. She'd only been able to review a fraction of it on the run from the Radiance system, but there'd be plenty of time for proper study when she was back aboard the Princess Cecile.

  The corvette would be even more crowded than usual, she supposed, what with the former Alliance spacers added to the crew and a few Morzangan natives on the Sissie doing simple tasks. Well, that didn't matter.

  "Signals," said the voice of brusque, calm Lieutenant Leary at the command console. "A ship has just reentered sidereal space three hundred kay miles distant. Will you query her and determine who she really is, over?"

  When a ship moved between sidereal space and the Matrix, it caused a brief warping of space-time. The Goldenfels' sensors recognized and reported the distortion on the PPI, and probably on the attack and gunnery boards as well. It hadn't appeared on Adele's signals display till she imported it with a twitch of her wands.

  Her face didn't have much expression, which she supposed was normal for her. The vessel's identification transponder said it was the freighter Citoyen out of Kostroma, but the locator beacon—which normally wouldn't
be tripped unless the ship were crippled or derelict—said it was Alliance Fleet Ship Bluecher, as they'd feared and expected.

  "It's the Bluecher," Adele said on the two-way link. If Daniel wanted the rest of the crew to know the situation, he'd tell them. Beneath her the thrusters changed note, cutting and then blipping several times before roaring at high output.

  "Citoyen, this is the Parsifal out of Bryce," Adele announced calmly, using the main transmitter and her upper-class Bryce accent. "Have you met any other Alliance vessels? We were to rendezvous with the Goldenfels out of Pleasaunce. Over."

  When the Bluecher pinged them, their identification transponder would announce that they were the Parsifal. If the Bluecher's signals officer was as skilled as Captain Semmes obviously was and therefore knew how to trip the locator beacon, it would tell him the same thing. Obsessive behavior is a desirable trait in librarians—and spies.

  The pause this time was one Adele expected. At last a female voice said, "Freighter Parsifal, this is Citoyen. What is the ship in orbit with you? We can see there's a second ship. Answer immediately, over!"

  A text message from Daniel crawled across the bottom of Adele's display:

  can you remote from helmets so we leave soonest most urgent

  The letters were in puce, though how Daniel'd managed to do that was beyond Adele. It was clever of him to have picked up on text as a way of not interfering with critical radio traffic.

  Adele made several adjustments to the communications system, using her wands to control the console. Her handheld unit was already stowed in a pouch attached to her equipment belt. She slipped the wands in their slots and said, "Citoyen, it looks like a derelict warship. Captain Vanness is aboard now, taking stock. He won't be able to reply until he's back aboard. We don't have suit radios. Over."

  Certain that the hookup worked, she unlatched her shock harness. She would've floated away if Daniel hadn't grabbed her and propelled her toward the airlock. Hogg and Tovera sandwiched them, as usual. There was nobody else left on the Goldenfels' bridge or in the A Deck corridor.