In the Stormy Red Sky-ARC

by David Drake

  "And incoming from all directions is going to make it harder to avoid, won't it, sir?" Blantyre said. She frowned. "Though programming two attacks is going to be a lot harder than programming one, especially with time short."

  "True on both counts, Blantyre," Daniel said. "It's all the same to the attack computers, of course, but the Chief Missileers themselves will have to hand off one target to a subordinate."

  He grinned again, lighting the room. "Of course on the vessels where one of the commissioned officers fancies himself as a missileer, that permits the warrant officer in the slot to do the job he's trained for anyway," he said. "I'm confident that Chief Borries here on the Milton will be pleased at the prospect."

  What would I do if Daniel tried to take over my communications duties? Adele wondered. It wouldn't happen, of course, but if it did?

  But there was a difference between that and the way Daniel regularly usurped the attack boards. Borries was a ship chandler's son who'd gone to space and, because he was a bright lad, had been apprenticed to a missileer in the Pellegrinian service. Adele was Mundy of Chatsworth.

  "And Alliance defense and maneuver will certainly be compromised, yes," Daniel went on, grinning even more broadly. "That's particularly true if we come out widely spread—"

  Adele switched screens to the loosest extraction yet, one which showed Anston scattered about the Alliance formation, rather like a handful of gravel tossed onto a tile floor. She was careful to place the Arcona close to the Milton, however.

  "—though I'd nonetheless prefer that we appear close enough that our targets have minimal time to react."

  The fictional missile tracks wove an attractive pattern, rather like glowing spider webs. There was a cleanliness to space battles, at least for the victors: a phosphor dot vanished, nothing more. Even the best optical sensors showed only expanding gas balls with at most a section of hull or a gun turret riding the shockwave.

  The truth was close to the image. Bodies vaporized instead of burning or were torn to shreds instead of dying in slow agony from belly wounds.

  Adele smiled without humor. That was Daniel's province. He'd killed far more people in his naval career than she had, but he'd never been drenched with blood from someone he'd shot in the throat nor stepped through feces which his victims had voided when they spasmed into death.

  If Adele wanted, she had sufficient connections now to become an assistant director at the Library of Celsus. She wouldn't have to carry a pistol, and her whole life would be surrounded by collected knowledge and by people who'd never imagined killing another person.

  But she'd have to give up her RCN family. That price was too high.

  "For the same reason, our destroyers will also launch at the heavy ships," Daniel said. "Even taken all together, the Alliance destroyers only equal the throw weight of a single cruiser, and they're too maneuverable to make hits probable if we attack them ship by ship with our own destroyers."

  Adele dutifully added pale blue threads from the destroyers, four apiece. That was a pious hope, but she knew as well as the commissioned officers that it was unlikely any of the captured ships from the Friedrich on down would manage a full salvo.

  "Ships which are in range will use their plasma cannon on the Alliance light craft," Daniel said, "but I want our destroyers to concentrate on the minesweepers if at all possible. Four-inch—well, ten centimeter—guns aren't going to have much effect even on other destroyers, and if we aren't able to break the siege entirely, the minesweepers are more dangerous enemies anyway."

  "Sir?" said Cory. He cleared his throat. "I wonder if ships—destroyers, that is—who happen to extract in a suitable position might not fire on the Alliance base? On the antiship batteries there, I mean."

  "Well, I'll be buggered," Daniel said in a conversational tone. "You're right, there's no atmosphere to dissipate the plasma, and even a fairly dispersed charge will heat the missile bodies enough to deflagrate the fuel. Maybe even detonate it! Very well done, Lieutenant Cory!"

  Daniel looked around the bridge, beaming, then nodded toward Adele. Toward the back of her head, of course, but he knew she'd be watching on her display. No one else in the compartment might understand the gesture, but Adele did.

  Cory had been . . . not her protégé, precisely, but her project. The boy had barely graduated from the Academy and initially hadn't distinguished himself in active service either. He'd shown a real flair for communications, however. When she realized how much he was learning just by watching her, she began to actively train him in her field.

  From that start, Cory had blossomed to the point of noticing a tactical possibility that Captain Daniel Leary had missed. Granted, the close-in defenses of Admiral Petersen's temporary base weren't likely to be significant in this action, but it was still a clever piece of work.

  "One salvo and then we insert," Daniel said. "We regroup a light-day out, back where we made our initial extraction to observe the situation. One destroyer, the Insidioso under Captain Robinson, will extract a light-hour out, observe the Alliance reaction, and then rejoin us with a report."

  He cleared his throat. "If the Insidioso is unable to carry out those duties, then they devolve on the Z31 under Captain Kenlon. I've briefed both officers on what information I'll want, though it's obvious enough."

  In a manner of speaking, Robinson—or Kenlon—didn't have to do anything except bring their ships back so that Adele and her team, Cazelet and Cory, could sift their sensor recordings. Daniel was probably right to personify the activity rather than to point out that brave, skilled RCN spacers were simply a means to allow machines to do the necessary work.

  "Any further questions, then?" said Daniel. "If not, return to your duty stations. We'll be extracting one light-hour from Cacique in ten minutes ship's time."

  "Sir?" said Fink. "What do we do after we've attacked and regrouped?"

  Daniel shrugged, but he was smiling. "Well, I could say that the answer to that depends on the situation, Fink," he said, "and so it does, of course. But I'll expect all ships to reload their missile tubes as quickly as possible, because I don't think we're going to sweep all the Alliance forces from the Cacique system with that one pass."

  "And we're not going to quit . . ." said Adele, rotating her couch to look at the others for the first time since the council began. She was the only one present besides Daniel who'd really been in this place before, and she had a right to speak by virtue of who she was, not her rank. "Until we have run the Alliance out of the system."

  She gave her colleagues an icy grin.

  "Or we're dead."

  CHAPTER 24

  Above Cacique

  Adele was reviewing the notes Cory and Else made during the council ahead of the one light-hour observation when Daniel announced on the intercom, "Extracting in thirty, that is three-zero, seconds."

  She didn't have any particular concern with the notes, but it gave her something to focus on after she'd organized for Daniel the sensor data from the final preparatory dip into the sidereal universe. People—including Adele—sometimes had hallucinations in the Matrix. She'd found that if she was absorbed in something, that was less likely to happen . . . though once in the midst of a long voyage, she'd seen a slit-pupilled eye watching her from the other side of a display of RCN personnel records.

  Senator Forbes, wearing her formal robes, nodded her way past the Marine guards and walked across the bridge. She knew she didn't belong here, so she'd timed her arrival so that no one would have leisure to stop her.

  Adele thought of turning to grab Forbes. Shortly Signal Officer Mundy would be very busy, but for the next twenty seconds she had nothing to do but wait.

  Twenty seconds wouldn't be enough time. I could shoot her, of course, but that would be more disruptive than letting her stay on the bridge. Probably.

  Chief Missileer Borries was in the Battle Direction Center. At the missile console was his striker, Seth Chazanoff, a former Chief on a light cruiser who'd accepted the
demotion to serve under Captain Leary; the rear couch was empty.

  Instead of sitting at the missile console, Forbes walked to where Hogg and Tovera sat against the starboard bulkhead and flipped down the jumpseat they'd left vacant between them. She gave Adele a nod and a curt grin. It was just possible that the Senator understood the options which had sequenced through Adele's mind.

  All the options, because Adele had no governor which said, "But of course we couldn't do that."

  Adele smiled faintly. Senator Forbes was unpleasant, but the woman had intelligence and an impressively pragmatic outlook.

  Lieutenant Cory was on the other side of the signals console, and Rene Cazelet backed Vesey on the astrogation console. Ordinarily Vesey as First Lieutenant would be in the BDC, but everyone accepted that Blantyre was the better tactician. If an Alliance missile tore off the Milton's bow, far better that Blantyre rather than Vesey be in the separate armored control station in the far stern.

  "Extracting!" said Blantyre from the BDC.

  For a moment Adele felt herself being cut apart at each joint. It wasn't painful, exactly; more like a hundred icy bands jerking tight around and through her body. Then the bridge lighting sharpened, her console display switched automatically to real-time sensor readouts, and Adele was back to work.

  Six RCN vessels had extracted ahead of the Milton, and as Adele's display brightened to life it highlighted a distortion in space-time which quickly resolved into the Director Friedrich. A microwave cone on the Helgowelt's bow was already rotating toward what the Alliance commander assumed was the flagship of Squadron Varnell.

  Adele alerted the command group by an icon on each officer's console or face-shield. She cued Cazelet electronically, but she also nodded toward his image inset on her display, knowing that he would watching her through her own console.

  This timing was perfect beyond anybody's ability to plan. If one believed in personified Luck, then it would shortly be balanced by a corresponding disaster—perhaps a missile striking the Friedrich or the Milton itself. If one were religious, then the Gods were fighting for the Republic as they had done so often in the past according to devout historians.

  Adele Mundy believed in doing her job as well as she could. On a vessel commanded by Daniel Leary, she could expect that her shipmates would have the same priority.

  "Alliance forces . . ." Cazelet said, sending via directed microwave and on 15.5 mega-Hertz. One pole of the Milton's 20-meter beam was directed toward the Helgowelt, some nine thousand miles distant while the other pole pointed to within 20 degrees of the Alliance base. There'd be sufficient dispersion across the much greater distance to Inner for the communications staff there to read it clearly even if something was wrong with their microwave pickups. "This is AFS Luetzow, flagship of Squadron Maor. Hold for orders from Admiral Maor, break."

  Rene Cazelet had been born on Blythe and raised on Pleasaunce. In the course of on-the-job training in his family's shipping firm, he'd acted both as ground controller at a spaceport and as signals officer on a starship. There was no pretence in his accent or delivery.

  Adele waited a beat of three. Ships continued to coalesce out of the Matrix. Predictably the later they appeared, the farther they were from their assigned locations . . . but none of them was very late or very far out.

  "All Alliance units receiving this signal," said Adele, broadcasting in clear. "This is Admiral of the Fleet Edith Maor."

  She'd decided to pronounce "units" as "oonits" in Pleasaunce fashion. She didn't have a voice recording of Maor, so she had to hope that a hint of the generalized accent of the Admiral's home world would pass muster for at least a brief time.

  "By order of his worshipful majesty Guarantor Jorge Porra," she said, "I am superseding former Admiral Petersen with immediate effect. Admiral Petersen is to remain in his quarters—"

  Adele didn't know whether Petersen was aboard the Helgowelt or on Inner. The Heimdall had been his flagship at New Harmony, but a battleship under way at 1 g acceleration would be more comfortable for most purposes than a moon base whose gravity was an eighth of that. He might well be with the patrol squadron on every other leg.

  "—until I arrive. All Alliance citizens are directed to enforce the Guarantor's orders on pain of summary court martial. Over."

  The most interesting thing about what happened next was that for more than thirty seconds nothing happened. Then a hoarse male voice said, "Luetzow, this is Helgowelt. Will you repeat the last communication, please, we received a garbled signal. Over."

  He'd switched to a laser communicator, perhaps to suggest that the "missed message" really was an electronics failure. More likely, Captain Thomas Ridgway of the Helgowelt wanted the greater privacy of laser. He was using the squadron's one-day code also, no problem for Adele because the code generators of Varnell's ships had been synched with the rest of Petersen's command before they separated.

  Ridgway was probably as fearful of being accused by his fellow captains of questioning the Guarantor's orders as he was of not making some effort to check if this were somehow a subtle provocation by Petersen—perhaps in concert with the Guarantor. There was almost nothing too paranoid and convoluted to have come from Porra's fevered brain.

  It's all right for a leader to be ruthless, Adele thought. He shouldn't be whimsical, though, and he especially shouldn't be whimsically ruthless.

  She smiled faintly. No one had ever accused her of being whimsical, though she would make an extremely bad leader for other reasons.

  "Helgowelt, this is Maor!" Adele said harshly. "If Petersen is aboard, confine him to quarters and land immediately at your base. Is former admiral Petersen aboard your ship, over?"

  Adele had chosen to impersonate Maor—it was her choice, of course—because the admiral had risen by virtue of being trustworthy rather than dashing ability. She was the only woman among those whom Porra might have sent on a political mission of this sort. An alternative would have been for Adele to act the part of an Alliance signals officer with Cazelet portraying a male admiral, but even with communication distortions his youth might be noticed. This seemed to be working.

  "Admiral Maor, this is Captain Ridgway," said the hoarse voice from the battleship, confirming Adele's presumption. "Admiral Petersen is not aboard the Helgowelt. To the best of my knowledge—"

  "Prepare to launch," said Daniel. He spoke over the intercom, but as planned Cory copied the warning through the communicators feeding a time synch to the other RCN ships.

  "—he's in his quarters at Liberty Base. The Helgowelt will continue patrolling to prevent the enemy from making a sortie, another sortie that is, from—"

  "Launching four," Daniel said, his tone calm but bright with emotion.

  The Milton rocked with multiple hammer blows. The cruiser's size and stiff frame permitted her to launch four missiles at a time without fear that they would interfere with one another because of exhaust and the shock of launching.

  Captain Ridgway was still chattering, making excuses to stay as distant as possible from the arrest of his commanding officer and its political repercussions. Adele ignored him as she transmitted full particulars on what was happening to the RCN forces on Cacique. She used RCN codes, though by now there wasn't much to conceal from the enemy beyond what multiple missile salvos were making abundantly clear.

  The miniature clock inset in the center of Daniel's display clicked from 59 to 60, then 61 and onward in red block letters. It was counting out the seconds since the Milton extracted into sidereal space.

  He had the Plot-Position Indicator on the top half of his screen and two attack boards splitting the lower display. The Treasurer Johann had finally arrived, three thousand miles out of position but with a fortunately good angle to sweep the Alliance formation—if the cruiser's Chief Missileer were better at his job than Commander Kevin Rowland was as an astrogator. Rowland would not be confirmed in command of the Johann if Daniel had anything to say about it.

  Daniel grinned. For his
opinion on the subject to matter, he and Commander Rowland had to survive the next few hours. Daniel never bet against himself, but he was intellectually aware that both were significant variables.

  The right-hand board echoed Borries' display. He was setting up the attack on the Helgowelt in the BDC. Borries had control of two four-tube sets on both the Milton's upper and lower belts. Daniel wouldn't step in unless he saw something critically and obviously wrong with the Chief Missileer's proposal. That wouldn't happen unless Borries had a stroke in the middle of the process, and even then his deputy Chazanoff would doubtless complete it properly. Daniel glanced over the proposed attack anyway.

  Senator Forbes sat against the bulkhead. She as calm as she'd been when seated across a dinner table from Lieutenant, as he then was, Leary in Xenos less than two years before. Forbes hadn't been wearing her senatorial robes then and she shouldn't be wearing them now—this wasn't a civil function by any stretch of the imagination—but it would look good in her campaign presentations.

  Forbes hadn't attempted to bring a flunky to record her presence on the bridge, but she obviously knew that the ship's internal systems did so automatically. No doubt she believed that for the right incentive some member of the Milton's technical staff would arrange for her to get a copy of what was intended to provide evidence for a court martial or an accident inquiry.

  Irritated as he'd been when Forbes breezed in, Daniel might give her the copy himself. She'd seated herself between two servants who had no more proper business on the bridge than she did . . . and who would without the least hesitation kill her if they decided that was a good idea. That meant she was smart and also that she had guts, virtues that the Senate could do with more of.