In the Stormy Red Sky-ARC

by David Drake

  "Tovera!" Adele said, jerking her head toward Daniel because her hands were busy with the control wands. Her console had blinked when the missile hit, but after running its self-check it was back in service.

  Tovera had been taught field medicine during her training with the Fifth Bureau. This certainly wasn't the first head injury Hogg had seen either, but Tovera probably knew more about painkilling drugs—besides alcohol—than he did.

  Adele wanted Daniel to make a full recovery more than she wanted anything else in life. The only thing she could do to aid the process was to carry out her own duties, which was what she would have done anyway.

  She smiled coldly. Other people seemed to make life more complicated than she found it to be. For example—

  "Sir! Sir!" Vesey cried. She'd turned to stare at Daniel and was fumbling for the catches of her seat restraints.

  "Lieutenant Vesey!" Adele said. If her most recent transmission—and Adele couldn't remember—had been on the command channel, then this rebuke was going to all the Milton's surviving officers instead of remaining between her and Vesey on a two-way link. That didn't matter. "Take control of this ship now!"

  "Sir!" said Vesey, but this time it wasn't her earlier whimpering. She straightened, bringing up the High Drive and thruster controls on the lower half of her display.

  On the upper portion, Vesey had been trying to view the damage through the Milton's external sensors. That was an obvious waste of time, at least obvious to Adele. Her wands flickered.

  The High Drive shut down momentarily. Things—including Daniel's head on the couch—lifted. Before weightlessness was more than a lurch in Adele's stomach, the motors resumed their snarl, though at a lower level: they were developing no more than the standard 1 g acceleration. The cruiser's wild gyrations gradually slowed.

  While Vesey did her proper job, Adele imported visuals of the Milton from the sensors of the Arcona and the Director Friedrich. The battleship was operating in emergency mode, limited to passive data collection. Adele switched the command console back to normal, then directed it to amplify the image and transmit it through the laser link.

  After her own computer had sharpened both sets of imagery, Adele forwarded them to Vesey at the astrogation console. As expected, they were ugly sights.

  The missile had taken off fifty feet of the Milton's stern. The outriggers, though tattered at their stern ends, remained to provide scale; otherwise Adele would have had to superimpose a before-action schematic of the cruiser over its present image.

  The Battle Direction Center was gone, along with everyone in it. The missile's trajectory must have been nearly perpendicular, striking on the spine and blasting everything beneath down through the keel.

  Armored bulkheads divided the ship vertically. It was lucky that the one ahead of the impact hadn't ruptured—or again, perhaps it had. The riggers acted as the damage control party on a warship, since they were normally inside the hull during action. Woetjans was chivying sternward the personnel waiting in the forward rotunda.

  Adele glanced around the bridge. Chazanoff looked groggy, but he was trying to plot a missile attack.

  "Officer Chazanoff!" Adele said. "Take command of all the missile sets. Officer Borries is dead, over."

  The only reason she gave the order was that it would waste time to pass the information to someone who had command authority, which Signals Officer Mundy assuredly did not. That was a good reason, though, and in a crisis like this it might well be the best reason.

  "Aye aye, sir," said the new Chief Missileer phlegmatically. He adjusted his display. As Adele had expected, an order delivered in a tone of command was sufficient. Chazanoff was operating on trained reflex rather than intellect as chaos rained down on him.

  Did the Milton have any functional missile tubes? Well, that wasn't Adele's problem.

  "Mundy!" Senator Forbes shouted over he racket. She wasn't linked to the cruiser's commo net, but she'd managed to cross the bucking deck. She clung to the supports of the signals console. "Take command of the fleet! Somebody needs to, and that puppy Vesey certainly can't!"

  "Sit down, Senator," Adele said. "I don't have the authority or the skill either one."

  "Launching four!" said Chazanoff. Only two missiles banged out in response. Still, that was two more than there might have been.

  "You know which ship is which," Forbes said. "And you know how to fight someplace besides on the Senate floor."

  "I can't—"

  "May the demons eat your tits, you bloody fool!" Forbes shouted. "I'll make you an admiral, does that satisfy you? I'm brevetting you! You're a bloody admiral!"

  Adele opened her mouth, then closed it. Forbes was an unpleasant woman, but she wasn't stupid; and in this case, she wasn't wrong.

  Commander Potts in Z44 was probably competent to handle the task or Daniel wouldn't have given him command of the Blue element, but Adele wouldn't trust a destroyer's communications suite to coordinate a fleet action. The Arcona was damaged, and Adele didn't know how badly. The Treasurer Johann was untouched, but Daniel would rise from his stupor and strangle her if she passed the command off to an officer who couldn't astrogate better than Commander Rowland had.

  And Forbes was right about Vesey too. The lieutenant wasn't a puppy, but this was a job for someone who was ready to kill without hesitating an eyeblink.

  "All right," said Adele, bringing up a PPI screen. She'd done so in the past, but only for curiosity. "Now get out of here, I'm busy."

  "Mistress?" said Rene Cazelet urgently. "The squadron on Cacique is coming up, over."

  And so they were. Five, no, six icons; one was crosshatched because it was in the planet's shadow relative to the Milton's sensors. Each had a six-digit alphanumeric designator which Daniel would have identified immediately. Adele could have looked them up, of course, but that would have taken time which she could better spend on other matters.

  "Cory, how long before those ships from Cacique are able to maneuver, over?" Adele said.

  Cory's image stared from her display like a death mask. Adele recalled that he and Midshipman Else, who'd been stationed in the BDC, had become friends.

  "Mistress," he said and swallowed. "The Jervis, seven minutes. The Lupine, eight minutes. The Dido, nine minutes, and the other three cruisers spaced behind her at a minute each. Over."

  "Very good," said Adele. "Break. Anston elements, this is Mundy of Chatsworth speaking for Anston Six. Engage the enemy more closely. Mundy out."

  The force from Cacique guaranteed victory, but if the remaining Alliance forces began launching into the gravity well, they could destroy the reinforcements before they came into action. Therefore the remnants of Admiral Petersen's squadron had to be fully occupied for the next ten minutes or so to ensure an RCN victory.

  There wasn't any doubt what Daniel would have done if he were alert. Adele couldn't execute the details of the plan, but the decision itself hadn't been difficult.

  She wondered if the other RCN captains would refuse or ignore the order. She smiled faintly. If so they wouldn't have to worry about court martials if she survived. Adele tried to take a more relaxed attitude than came naturally to her, but Mundy of Chatsworth had given the order. Lady Mundy was quite meticulous about the family honor.

  A single gun fired from the Milton's ventral turret. Adele frowned at the visuals. The dorsal turret was intact but unmoving; the plasma cannon were cocked upward at a high angle. Perhaps there was an electrical fault that would be quickly remedied. More likely the turret had jumped its ring and couldn't be repaired short of a dockyard.

  It wasn't likely that the Milton would survive long enough to reach a dockyard, of course. The mission was to drive the Alliance out of the Cacique system. If that required throwing cripples against undamaged enemy ships to buy time, so be it.

  Adele looked at the PPI again. She'd basically exhausted her expertise when she ordered the squadron to attack.

  None of the slowly moving dots on the display wer
e missiles. She knew that it was possible to track the missiles on the PPI—Daniel did it all the time—but she had no idea of how. There was a great deal of what was necessary in a naval battle which she had no idea of. Ordinarily that wasn't a problem.

  Chazanoff continued to launch in sequences of one to three at a time, if a single item could be called a sequence. Adele had no way of telling how many of the launches were reloads; perhaps fewer than a dozen of the Milton's thirty-two tubes were functional.

  Sun's single plasma cannon continued to fire slowly. How much immediate danger was the Milton in? Adele hoped that the way they'd spun after the missile blasted off the stern had taken them out of the zone the Alliance ships had been targeting. The enemy had had time to revise its course predictions by now, but the distances involved meant the projectiles might be some time arriving even if they meant certain death when they did.

  Adele wasn't an admiral save by fiat of Senator Forbes, but she was a signals officer. "Cacique Squadron," she said, broadcasting in clear. "This is Mundy of Chatsworth, speaking for Admiral Daniel Leary."

  The ships rising from the surface might well have lifted with partial crews. If the missing personnel included the signals officer and code clerks, Adele wanted to be sure that her orders were nonetheless understood. They might be her last words, after all.

  "You will carry the attack to the enemy with all available means," Adele said. "Under no circumstances will you break off the engagement until the enemy base and all Alliance vessels in the system have surrendered or been destroyed. Do you copy, over?"

  "Chatsworth, this is Commodore Battenberg," replied a harsh female voice. She was transmitting from the first ship to lift. "We copy you. I think I speak for the entire New Harmony Squadron when I say that I've never received an order which will give me greater pleasure to execute. Cacique Six out."

  Several additional ships were laboring up from Cacique now. Judging from the example of the first six, Adele estimated that it would be at least half an hour before the newcomers could possibly join the action.

  "Sir!" said Lieutenant Cory on the command channel. "Two transports are lifting from the moon base! I suggest we send destroyers to capture the prizes, over."

  Adele thought of what Daniel would say, then quirked a smile. She didn't need Daniel's advice on the matter: their instincts were the same.

  "No, Cory," she said. "Nothing else matters until we've eliminated all the enemy warships. Out."

  During their conversation, Forbes had clung to the communications console and shouted into Adele's ear to be heard. No one else on the Milton's bridge had the faintest notion that the Plenipotentiary had raised Signals Officer Mundy to the brevet rank of admiral.

  Nonetheless, the Milton's officers accepted her orders as though she had the right to issue them. Adele suspected that was because they viewed her as Daniel's friend rather than anything she'd earned in her own right . . . though earning Daniel's friendship wasn't a small matter, when she came to think of it.

  Adele's smile was minuscule, but it had more warmth in it than she usually displayed. She would much rather be Daniel's friend than be an admiral in her own right.

  The beads on the PPI which indicated the four Alliance cruisers began to fade. The enemy destroyers blurred also as Commander Potts led the Blue element down on them.

  Adele frowned and switched from the console to the much less capable internal display of her personal data unit. There could be a delayed fault in the console from the missile impact. . . .

  The Alliance ships had vanished. Only wreckage and the two disabled battleships remained in the Cacique system.

  "Mistress!" Rene Cazelet said. "They're running! All of them that can get under way are running into the Matrix!"

  "We've won!" shouted Cory. "By the Gods, we've won!"

  Neither youth remembered to sign off properly. Perhaps they'd been infected by a signals officer who tended to be cavalier about such things herself.

  What do I do now? Hand the whole business over to Vesey, I suppose.

  "Mistress, Heimdall is signalling to you, over," said Cory. Communication from the enemy flagship seemed to have brought back his professional demeanor.

  Cory had been handling the ordinary signals traffic, but it continued to run as a text sidebar on Adele's display. Adele found the thread easily: Petersen calling chatsworth, over. Petersen calling chatsworth, over. . . .

  "All Anston elements, cease fire," Adele said, taking care of the main priority first. She couldn't be certain that the Alliance commander wanted to surrender, but if he didn't nothing would be lost by delaying the final salvos by a minute or two. "Break, Officer Chazanoff, cease fire. Break. All Cinnabar elements—"

  Cory would be directing the transmission to the destroyers and the ships rising from Cacique, though Adele's real concern was for the cruisers which had been attacking the heavy Alliance vessels.

  "—cease fire by order of Admiral Leary."

  The Alliance didn't provide proper missile targets any more, but Adele knew human beings too well to be sure no one would launch at the crippled battleships. Missileers on most warships had few opportunities to practice their craft. A battleship in freefall and without defensive armament would tempt even what passed in the RCN for a saint.

  "Break," Adele continued. "Petersen, this is Chatsworth. Go ahead, over."

  The Heimdall was sending by tight-beam microwave, but the transmission was badly broken. Damage to the battleship must be more extensive than Adele had assumed from the visuals.

  The vaporized projectiles had wiped everything less refractory than the gun turrets off the Heimdall's port and under sides, but the remainder of the hull appeared normal at a distance. Apparently redeposited steel had plated equipment on that side also and seriously degraded its performance.

  That also explained why the Heimdall was limping along on the power of seven thrusters, inadequate to impart more than a modicum of acceleration to 80,000 tonnes. A thruster nozzle was wide, and even a partial blockage would merely reduce power. If the minuscule throat of a High Drive were plated shut, the explosion which destroyed the motor would be only the start of the problem.

  "Lady Mundy," said Admiral Petersen, his voice breaking despite his painstaking formality. "Fortune has not favored the Alliance of Free Stars today. I ask that you accept the surrender of the forces under my command, over."

  "Admiral . . ." said Adele. As she spoke, her wands expanded real-time imagery of the Alliance base and both battleships. "When you say, 'the forces' do you include your base and any ships there, over?"

  "Yes of course, Lady Mundy," Petersen said. With a flash of miserable anger he went on, "Do you think I don't see they'd be bloody slaughtered if they tried to run? We surrender, over!"

  The transports that had been trying to escape were back on the ground, their thrusters cooling. When the Alliance warships fled, the unarmed vessels must have realized that their situation was hopeless. The base personnel were shooting up flares, white star clusters which burned out almost before they started drifting down in the low gravity.

  "Admiral, I have no authority to do so in my own right," Adele said. "However, my commanding officer, Admiral Daniel Leary, accepts your surrender on behalf of the Republic of Cinnabar. My colleague Commander Potts will coordinate salvage and rescue operations. Chatsworth out."

  She took a deep breath and sank back onto her couch. Hogg and Tovera were carrying Daniel out of the compartment on a cocooned stretcher; there was a Medicomp only fifty feet down the corridor. They hadn't been able to move him until Vesey reduced acceleration and brought the ship under control.

  Adele supposed she needed to give Potts a direct order, though he would have heard the entire exchange already. She would get to that in a moment.

  Adele closed her eyes. Be well, Daniel. The Republic needs you almost as much as I do.

  "He's coming around," said Daniel in a cold female voice.

  "I dunno," Daniel objected in a gruffly
male voice. "He still looks pretty bad. I think it's going to be a while."

  "The readouts say he's awakening," Daniel said, her enunciation clipped and precise. "Therefore he's awakening. We don't know whether or not there's been brain damage, but he will awaken."

  Daniel opened his eyes and blinked. Adele and Hogg were watching down at him. They were talking, not me. Cory and an older, angry looking woman—Senator Forbes, of course—were looking at him also, and Tovera was looking both ways down the corridor.

  Cory looked worried. Why is he wearing lieutenant's pips? But then Daniel remembered he'd promoted the boy himself . . . and when was that, a long time ago?

  "What happened to me?" Daniel said. He tried to lift his torso. Everything around him blurred to gray shadows against a lighter gray background.

  He relaxed. He was hooked to a Medicomp, as he should have guessed; and he would not be trying to get up again for a moment or two.

  "We were hit by a missile," said Adele. "A seat broke loose and the metal frame gave you a nasty crack on the head."

  She paused, then said in the same flat tone, "If you hadn't recovered, I would have invented a more heroic story. Much as I dislike to lie."

  By the time Daniel managed to stop laughing, it didn't hurt much at all—which was a welcome change from the agony with which he'd started. He sobered, though he was careful to leave a smile on his lips.

  Adele lied expertly when carrying out her duties to the RCN and to her other master. Daniel didn't recall her ever lying about a personal matter, however. Her offer was a monument more impressive than the statue on the Pentacrest which a grieving Republic might well erect to his memory.

  Aloud he said, "What damage did the missile do, besides breaking the seat?"

  "Cory?" said Adele with a curt nod. She was holding her data unit, but she hadn't taken the control wands out of their conformal restraints.

  "Sir!" said Cory. "We've lost everything aft of Frame 260, but the bulkhead there held. Other than that, surprisingly little damage."