The Far Side of The Stars

by David Drake

  But thank God she had!

  Semmes had been accelerating on High Drive, but he cut in his plasma thrusters when the Bluecher became the target of hundreds of unguided rockets. Daniel judged his enemy's new course and adjusted the Sissie to stay in the planet's shadow in this deadly game of hide and seek.

  Three Commonwealth ships unloaded their rockets at the cruiser, then two more. Great heavens, Daniel hadn't imagined a reaction anything like this when he tricked the Bluecher into destroying a country craft! He hadn't imagined the Commonwealth vessels could react that quickly even if they'd wanted to. It was as if they'd been waiting for an excuse to launch on an allied vessel!

  More ships were rising from Radiance. Daniel couldn't tell whether they were civilian or more naval units; the only external difference was the bundles of rockets on naval vessels, easily overlooked among the folded rigging. Captain Semmes must not have been able to tell either, for the Bluecher suddenly opened fire on them with her 15-cm plasma cannon.

  Daniel supposed Semmes was simply trying to discourage another irritating rocket volley, because nobody'd expect serious results from plasma cannon at a range of several hundred thousand miles. The guns were for defensive purposes, to deflect incoming missiles which couldn't be dodged. The country craft were so fragile, however, that the concentrated hammering of six cannon—only three of the cruiser's turrets bore on the target—caused the victim to stagger and curl back into the atmosphere.

  A handful of Commonwealth rockets suddenly detonated against the Bluecher. The cruiser's image sparkled like a butterfly's wing shaking off scales. The rockets' small fragmentation warheads were meant to destroy an enemy vessel's masts and rigging so that it couldn't escape—or pursue, depending on who was pirate and who was prey during a given engagement. They wouldn't seriously damage the hull of a country craft, let alone the thick plates of an Alliance heavy cruiser.

  But nobody likes to be shot at, to have the steel around him ring with slamming explosions followed by the sizzle of fragments that ricocheted among the rigging. Maybe it was for that reason that the Bluecher's gunnery officer began ripping another rising Commonwealth ship instead of turning the concentrated fire of his cannon on a projectile from the Princess Cecile as he should've done.

  The segment hit a stowed dorsal antenna, erupting in a white-hot spray like the tail of a comet nearing the sun. The damage wasn't serious, but everybody aboard the Bluecher knew that it could've been: that a course different by a matter of meters would've gutted the cruiser and left her adrift for the salvage teams.

  The Princess Cecile now had at least a prayer of succeeding. The cruiser'd launched another salvo after vaporizing the Commonwealth ship, but those missiles had missed by several miles. Daniel resumed acceleration with both powerplants as soon as he'd put the Sissie behind Radiance. Semmes' missileer didn't have the direct observation of the Princess Cecile that Daniel—thanks to Adele—did of the Bluecher.

  "Six, there's a heavy vessel reentering sidereal space out-orbit of Radiance, over," said Vesey. She'd focused on her duties, watching the sensor board while the battle raged around her. Many officers with more experience wouldn't have been able to do that.

  But it didn't matter now: the Princess Cecile would be clear or destroyed before the new opponent got sufficiently organized to take a hand. The description "heavy vessel" was based on the amount of distortion Vesey's instruments recorded as the newcomer reinserted itself into normal space-time. There hadn't been another cruiser in the Alliance squadron, so that probably meant one of the battleships had also been working up when the Goldenfels destroyed the vessels hangared at Lorenz Base.

  "Ship, this is Six," Daniel said as his fingers pounded a new set of instructions into his virtual keyboard. "We will be entering the Matrix—"

  His display flashed with orange letters each the size of his extended hand:

  BREAK BREAK BREAK

  "RCS Aristoxenos, this is RCS Princess Cecile," said Adele's voice over the announcement channel. "We have a target for you, Admiral O'Quinn—an Alliance cruiser. All other vessels are friendly. I repeat, all vessels except the Alliance cruiser are friendly. Princess Cecile over."

  Daniel felt the rocking clunk of the Sissie's last two missiles sliding into the tubes, ready to launch. "Mr. Betts, cease fire!" he ordered, instinctively placing a lockout on the attack console. "Prepare attack solutions for the Aristoxenos and transmit them to her soonest. I don't trust their computers or their people either one, but the good Lord knows I'm glad to have their company, out!"

  Betts had been doing a fine job, but he might not see the sudden necessity of holding the Sissie's final rounds in reserve. Daniel would explain the situation when he had a moment, but the first priority was to prevent the Chief Missileer from spending what might otherwise become an opportunity to mousetrap the Alliance cruiser.

  Adele was in conversation with the Aristoxenos. She'd cut Daniel into the channel but he was too busy controlling the Princess Cecile to worry about what they were saying.

  The Bluecher had swung from its predicted course and shut down its thrusters when the missile grazed it. Daniel had to fight the Sissie back into Radiance's cone of shadow. As a practical matter, that meant dipping closer to the planet; they were already deep enough that the upper stratosphere created minuscule but noticeable drag. The corvette wasn't safe until the last Alliance projectile was headed harmlessly out of the system, and even then there was the problem of landing with what might be unnoticed damage.

  The cruiser had stopped launching missiles with the fourth salvo. She was accelerating at 1.5 g, probably the best she could manage under the High Drive alone, along the course Semmes had set while he was preparing to winkle the Princess Cecile out of concealment. It would take her past Radiance on the down-orbit side—and, probably the major factor now—away from the Aristoxenos.

  Semmes doesn't know what's happening, Daniel realized. He must be pretty sure the newcomer wasn't a friend, but he couldn't be certain she was an enemy either. Having managed to get into combat with his Commonwealth allies, he'd be especially cautious not to repeat the mistake with—

  The Aristoxenos launched four missiles at the Bluecher. One of them described a tight arc. It was headed back toward the battleship when one or both High Drive motors failed and the missile disintegrated into a sphere of molten droplets.

  The Bluecher responded with a salvo split between the Aristoxenos and the Princess Cecile. The cruiser was extending its antennas. A large piece drifted away, the spar damaged by the Sissie's missile, cast off or broken off by the acceleration.

  The battleship had thirty-six missile tubes: thirty-one launched at the Bluecher. The thirty-second tube exploded, a blue-white cancer against the vessel's bow which took fifteen seconds to burn down. Daniel keyed in his final corrections, waited a heartbeat for a green icon to indicate the attack computer concurred, and launched the Sissie's remaining two missiles.

  He boosted thrust from the High Drive. The Sissie was far more nimble, now; even the half-magazine of missiles she'd carried on this voyage weighed in aggregate a quarter of the corvette's empty weight. The six missiles the Bluecher'd just launched blindly at them weren't a serious threat. The cruiser's missileer would've been smarter to direct the entire salvo at the battleship for which he had full course and speed information.

  Daniel brought the Princess Cecile out from behind Radiance, adjusting their course to a line nearly reciprocal to that of the Bluecher. He touched a port-side plasma thruster, then countered the thrust instantly with a blip from starboard, rolling the ship 30 degrees on her axis so that her dorsal and ventral turrets both bore on the cruiser.

  "Sun," he ordered, "dust 'em up! I want to give them something to think about besides their proper jobs!"

  "Roger, roger!" the gunner said delightedly, swinging his guns to take advantage of the unexpected target. There was no practical reason to fire 4-inch plasma cannon at a cruiser over a quarter million miles away; the Bluec
her's own 15-cm weapons couldn't have done serious harm to the corvette at this distance. The psychological effect of plasma bolts—though only sprays at this range—flash-heating the cruiser's hull might cause somebody to make a mistake, though, the way the Commonwealth rocket salvoes had distracted a gunnery officer who should've been worrying about an incoming missile.

  The ventral turret rubbed hard enough to send a squeal trembling through the whole vessel. It was supposed to be free-floating above the turret ring on magnetic repulsion. Given the strains the corvette had been taking Daniel supposed they ought to be thankful it rotated at all.

  The Princess Cecile could probably escape while the cruiser was occupied with its new enemy, but the possibility barely crossed Daniel's mind like the chance of landing on Radiance. Neither was a real option: the latter because the corvette wasn't rigged for landing, the former because Daniel Leary was an RCN officer and the RCN didn't run from fights. Even mutineers remembered that, apparently, once they'd had a chance to reflect.

  The Aristoxenos' antennas were extended with sails spread on many of them. O'Quinn hadn't taken the time—or perhaps had the crew—to clear the ship for action before entering sidereal space for what must've been meant as an attack on Lorenz Base. The Aristoxenos could've made a quick pass from outside the Planetary Defense Array, launched a salvo of missiles at the hangars, and then—if things worked out—escaped back into the Matrix before the Alliance survivors could respond.

  It was a perfectly good plan, basically what Daniel had intended when he went to Todos Santos; though if the expatriate spacers had agreed then, they'd have had Adele's signals skill to make the task easier and a great deal more safe.

  Daniel had to admit that it'd taken the Aristoxenos over a month to reach the Radiance system, though. Were it not for the Sissie's earlier attack, that would probably have been too late.

  Not that he was complaining at the way matters had developed. Neither "easy" nor "safe" was a watchword of the RCN; victory, however, was.

  As the Bluecher's half-salvo neared the Aristoxenos, the battleship's 8-inch plasma cannon began to fire from two turrets which the ship's own rigging didn't mask. A double-pulse caught one of the missiles before it'd separated into segments, converting it into a sphere of glowing gas spreading at the rate of a nuclear explosion. Other bolts vaporized segments with such violence that their destruction buffeted the remaining parts of their clusters off course.

  An 8-inch turret blew up with a white flash. A portion of the laser array that compressed the tritium pellet hadn't tripped, but the other lenses were sufficient to detonate the charge with only the gun's iridium breech to confine it. The blast sculpted a divot from the battleship's belly and sheared off two antennas of the ventral row.

  That cleared a line for the other belly turret, which immediately began to fire. Battleships had independent targeting, and the turret captains were apparently tracking even though they couldn't fire until the targets appeared beyond the ship's rigging. None of the cruiser's missiles made it through the sledging defensive fire, though one segment vaporized close enough to its target that a pair of topgallants ripped away when the Aristoxenos slid through the still-expanding cloud.

  The weight of the Aristoxenos' missiles was beyond the ability of any defensive battery to withstand, even that of another battleship. Semmes reacted in the only fashion that even hinted survival, slamming High Drive and plasma thrusters both to full power at right angles to the incoming salvo. The Bluecher's frame warped visibly at the overload, but the acceleration took her almost out of the cone of predicted missile tracks.

  The cruiser's eight big plasma cannon concentrated on the segments at the near edge, that ones that were still potentially dangerous. Bolt for bolt the 15-cm guns had only half the punch of the battleship's 8-inchers, but the Bluecher was cleared for action and her gunners were at a high state of training. The guns' hammering reduced parts of the multi-ton missile segments into gas whose escape drove the remainder off at angles harmless to the cruiser.

  Daniel knew precisely what acceleration the cruiser could manage in an emergency because he'd seen the Bluecher react to avoid the Commonwealth rockets. He predicted the direction of that acceleration by the angle he'd have chosen if he captained the Bluecher and the battleship was launching at him. The Princess Cecile's last pair of missiles stabbed in unnoticed till the cruiser's starboard turret desperately engaged a second before impact.

  A segment struck the Bluecher's bow as a cloud of gas still so dense that it crushed hull plating and carried away the leading dorsal, starboard and ventral antennas. Microseconds later another segment hit the stern squarely. The release of kinetic energy engulfed the last twenty meters of the vessel in a fireball which left only vacuum behind when it dissipated.

  The Bluecher had been about to launch missiles when she was hit. Several left their tubes but tumbled; the computer which should've updated their courses until burn-out instead spasmed when the cruiser whipped sideways.

  "Sissie Six to flagship," Daniel said, adding the alert channel so that the corvette's crew could listen to his transmission. They'd earned it, the good Lord knew! "Admiral, I suggest we cease fire until you offer the Bluecher a chance to surrender. Her captain is named Semmes, and I won't willingly participate in the murder of a man so able. Sissie over."

  "Sir?" said Betts, turning toward Daniel but speaking over the command channel. The bridge was too noisy for unaided voice. "The battleship has to cease fire. The conveyors from her magazines to the launch tubes are all frozen. They just had what was in the tubes when they lifted from Todos Santos."

  "Sissie Six, this is Zanie Six," said Admiral O'Quinn's voice, wheezing noticeably. Both ships had visual capacity, but standard operating procedure in the RCN was voice only. In a battle, bandwidth could become too valuable a commodity to waste on frills. "You take their surrender, Leary. You knocked her out."

  O'Quinn snorted and went on, "Your missileer even launched our missiles, though I'm damned if I know how he got control of our system. I didn't think that was possible! Over."

  Ah. Daniel hadn't thought it was possible either, but obviously Adele had known better. Apparently she hadn't been wasting her time while the Princess Cecile was moored adjacent to the battleship in San Juan harbor. That explained why the salvo had come so quickly. Daniel had expected minutes to pass before the Aristoxenos was ready to launch, even with Betts transferring solutions to the battleship's attack board.

  "Admiral," Daniel said, "the Princess Cecile was only a target before your very welcome arrival. If you'll take the credit for the victory which you've certainly earned, it'll make my job easier when I talk to people back in Xenos about what the Republic owes you. As I most certainly will, over."

  There was a pause greater than transmission lag before O'Quinn responded, "By God, Leary, if I'd had half the respect for your father that I do for you, we wouldn't be in this place now. Break. AFS Bluecher, this is Admiral O'Quinn, RCN. Do you surrender, or would you prefer to provide the target practice which I'll admit my crew could use, over?"

  Over the intercom alone Daniel said, "Personally, fellow Sissies, I'm just as glad they are here now."

  Adele let the cheers sound over the general push, though they almost drowned out the mumbled words of Captain Semmes surrendering unconditionally.

  CHAPTER 33

  "Ship," said Daniel, "this is Six. We'll be extracting from the Matrix above Todos Santos in a few minutes."

  Adele shielded him from the chatter on the intercom, but because of the Sissie's internal hush at this point in a voyage he heard spacers shouting, "Yee-haw!" and "Booze and women!" followed a moment later by Maginnes calling, "You can keep the women—this time I want a pretty little boy who's hung like a pony!"

  Maginnes was a rigger, waiting in her suit at the airlock with the rest of the starboard watch in case Woetjans and the port watch unexpectedly needed help lowering the minimal sail set with which the corvette had made this last leg o
f the run. Daniel thought of her, a squat stump of a woman with a face like a pug dog, and the pretty boy she wanted. But Maginnes was a spacer with money in her pocket, and she'd get whatever she wanted until the money ran out.

  "Now listen, Sissies," Daniel said, smiling in the knowledge that though he commanded this crew, they were his family as surely as he was part of theirs. "When we left Todos Santos we were on friendly terms with everybody except some folks from Pleasaunce. Those folks aren't around any more."

  He paused for laughter.

  "But a lot can change in a month," he continued. "Just ask the garrison of Lorenz Base about that if you don't believe me."

  More laughter. They'd been through a lot this voyage. The Sissies never doubted that Daniel was captain, but this was a good time for him to remind them that he was their captain, the man who wouldn't send them any place he wouldn't go himself.

  "There may have been political changes here," he said. He ignored the cries about wogs. "And there may well be an Alliance ship in port, in which case we won't stay any longer than it takes me to input the course data I've already prepared."

  They'd have been safer if they'd remained in company with the Aristoxenos. Alliance warships might be willing to disregard the Cluster government long enough to overwhelm an RCN corvette, but not in front of a Cluster battleship. Though seriously battered by the strains of the Matrix and explosive failures in her own armaments, the Zanie remained an impressive sight.

  Daniel had come alone because the Aristoxenos had only six High Drive motors functioning out of the original forty-eight. Her systems rated a complement of nearly a thousand, but her present crew was two hundred and fifty former RCN crewmen, supplemented by an equal number of their retainers who didn't have any experience off-planet. The Ten Star Cluster had no lack of experienced spacers, but only a handful of them had been willing to sign on with the decayed battleship. Not even those few would've boarded if they'd been told the details of a plan they'd have found insane.