What Distant Deeps-ARC

by David Drake

"RCS Philante, this is RCS Princess Cecile, Captain Leary commanding," Adele said. "Put your commander . . . ."

  She paused to check internal communications aboard the yacht, to make sure that the Navy List was correct. It was.

  " . . . Lieutenant Caplan on, over."

  The laser communicator would have allowed Adele to call the Philante without letting the others eavesdrop on the conversation—well, unless they were a great deal more skilled and technologically sophisticated that Adele thought they were. In this case, however, she wanted the Palmyrenes and the civilians alike to know what was going on.

  The outer airlock doors released, the cling and whirr had grown familiar to Adele from frequent repetition. She also heard the rumble of the gun turrets.

  Vesey had ordered Sun to unlock his guns from the axial, zero elevation setting in which they travelled, but the gunner was going beyond orders to lay his cannon on the Palmyrene cutters. Adele would have predicted Sun's decision—and under the circumstances, she was in whole-hearted agreement with him.

  "This is Caplan," replied the worried voice of Lieutenant Terry Caplan, who surprised Adele by being female. "Princess Cecile, we are on orders of RCN Station Palmyra. What are you doing here, over?"

  According to Navy House files, RCN Station Palmyra was a room in the Admiralty in Tadmor, the planetary capital. It was simply a liaison office granted by the Autocrator as a courtesy. The Philante or a similar ship of the Qaboosh Squadron was usually based in Tadmor Harbor to provide an RCN escort to Cinnabar-flag vessels which requested it.

  In the particular instance, the request had probably come—perhaps indirectly—from the Autocrator herself. The Philante's presence was intended as further proof of Cinnabar support for Irene's capture of Zenobia.

  We'll see about that.

  "Lieutenant Caplan," Adele said in her usual tone of cold dispassion, "Captain Leary has been sent by Navy House to take charge of this convoy in order to avoid an international incident. You will—"

  "Ma'am, the wogs are slewing on us!" Sun shouted on the command channel.

  "Open fire!" Adele said with as little hesitation as she showed when a target filled the sights of her pocket pistol.

  She would apologize to Vesey as soon as she had an opportunity, but Daniel and a rigging watch were still outside. The corvette's hull could shrug off even the direct hit of an 8-inch rocket, but fragmentation warheads intended to shred sails would turn human beings into catsmeat, even if the victims had been wearing hard suits. Adele wasn't going to let the chain of command lead to that result.

  The bow turret fired instantly, a Clang! Clang! from just back of the forward rotunda. The guns themselves were a danger to spacers out on the hull; but not a great danger when firing at high elevation as they were now to track the nearer cutter. Side-scatter from the Sissie's 4-inch weapons was unlikely to injure a spacer who wasn't almost in line with the bore.

  The massive 8-inch guns of the Milton, the cruiser which Daniel had commanded in the Montserrat Stars, had had a much wider cone of danger. Regardless, this was war and war had risks.

  The image of the nearer Palmyrene cutter blurred. The plasma bolts may not have breached the hull, but they detonated the nose fuse of at least one of the rockets. When that warhead exploded, it set off all the others—including the bundles of reloads. The cutter's bow section stayed more or less together, but the stern was reduced to sheet metal with occasional larger chunks, all drifting away in a cloud of the ship's atmosphere.

  A half-second after Sun fired, the Sissie rang again as Rocker, the technician in the BDC striking for Gunner's Mate, fired the ventral guns at the other cutter. He may initially have been waiting for Vesey to confirm the order, but he followed suit when his chief began shooting.

  The second cutter was over 200,000 miles distant, too far for bolts from 4-inch weapons to affect even so lightly built a target. Nonetheless Rocker—joined by Sun as soon as the bow turret could swing onto the new target—continued to fire until the cutter escaped into the Matrix.

  The Philante disappeared into the Matrix as well. Adele had expected the yacht's captain to demand an explanation, but she must have begun insertion procedures as soon as the shooting started. That showed Lieutenant Caplan to be decisive and furthermore to have good judgment—the Philante had no place in a fight against a warship with a full missile armament.

  Nonetheless, Adele didn't think Daniel would have decided to run if the positions had been reversed. Nor would any officer serving under Daniel, at least if they hoped to be serving under him in the future.

  The inner door of the airlock opened; Daniel stamped from it onto the bridge with Cory behind him. Riggers followed.

  Both officers had taken off their helmets before the ship's systems thought the pressure was equalized with that of the interior, but even an experienced spacer required several minutes to get out of a rigging suit. No matter: the control consoles could be adjusted to deal with that eventuality.

  Adele added the 20-meter emergency frequency to the Sissie's output. Civilian vessels, especially in a place as distant as the Qaboosh, might not have working laser or microwave suites, but they had to have at least shortwave if they were to receive landing instructions.

  "All Cinnabar vessels receiving this message . . . ," she said. Her proper business was communications, not space battles. "Hold your course and do not attempt to enter the Matrix. I repeat, hold your present course and do not attempt to avoid the directions of the duly authorized agent of Admiral Hartsfeld, Chief of the Navy Board."

  That was stretching the truth well beyond its breaking point, but the underlying implication was correct: if the civilians tried to flee, they would regret it. Very likely the Princess Cecile would open fire, and three or four of the freighters were close enough that plasma bolts would damage their rigging.

  Daniel sat down, the plates of his suit clattering against frame of his console. Before Adele handed off to him, she added, "All Cinnabar ships, respond immediately, over."

  "Unidentified vessel, don't shoot!" responded the nearest vessel. "This is Mary Ann, cleared from Palmyra to Zenobia. Do not shoot, we are lying to, over!"

  "Adele, keep going!" Daniel said, bellowing to be heard over the piercing buzz of the High Drive. His commo helmet hung from one short arm of the wheel that adjusted his console's relief, but he hadn't taken the time to don it. "I've got course calculations to make!"

  The Birdsong 312 and Maid of Brancusi were responding on 15.5 MegaHertz, the emergency frequency; their communications ran as text on a sidebar to Adele's display. Both captains were falling all over themselves in their public obedience to whatever the corvette ordered.

  The cutter's destruction had been spectacular, particularly since most of the civilians would never have seen anything like it. For Adele, as for the other Sissies, it had been a familiar sight. And all the present crew were survivors of the Milton when a missile had ripped the cruiser's stern off . . . .

  On tight-beam microwave the Sarah H. Gerdis replied crisply, "Princess Cecile, we are lying to as ordered. The ships you have attacked are Palmyrene navy vessels which were escorting this convoy, over."

  The fifth freighter was the most distant of the lot, straggling a good hundred thousand miles behind the next ahead. It was sending also, but Adele didn't have time to determine the content by an optical enlargement of the vessel's laser head.

  "Freighter Bonaventure," she said tartly, "switch to short wave immediately or correct the alignment of your laser communicator. All ships, hold for revised course data which will we transmit to you shortly. Acknowledge this communication, over."

  Daniel hadn't exactly said he was refiguring courses for the transports, but that seemed likely. Rather than give fuzzy information, Adele was adding concrete details which would make what she said believable. The civilian captains were certainly confused and probably terrified, but they had to be made to obey the Princess Cecile implicitly. Otherwise—

  Firing on Palmyre
ne cutters was an act of war against a nation which was officially a Cinnabar ally. Still, Daniel would get away with that if a court martial resulted—as it might—so long as he could provide proof of Palmyrene intentions. They were, after all, foreigners; and uppity foreigners at that.

  Firing on Cinnabar transports was a different matter; especially if one or more of the ships were owned by Senators, as was often the case. There was a great deal of money to be made on the fringes of civilization. The fact attracted investors with the power and connections to get away with cutting corners.

  Speaker Leary almost certainly invested in that sort of operation. Adele smiled like a crack in an ice floe. Well, they could probably square him through Deirdre.

  "I'm ready!" Daniel shouted, leaning forward to grab his commo helmet. He settled it on his head and, doing so, for the first time adjusted the console so that the bulk of his rigging suit didn't crush him against the virtual keyboard.

  "Cinnabar vessels," said Adele, "hold for Captain Leary. Captain Leary, go ahead."

  Her job wasn't over, of course: she simply reverted to the data collection which was ordinarily her first priority in a potentially hostile situation. Her equipment was copying information from the transports' databases—mostly logs and course data and not important. It was good to have it against necessity if it were available, however.

  Adele frowned, then felt her lips move into a smile of sorts. She assumed anything unfamiliar was potentially hostile. She liked to believe that she was less paranoid than Tovera, who always considered who to kill first—if necessary—when she met a group of people, but in truth mistress and servant shared a similar mindset.

  Neither of them were going to change. They were very useful to their associates the way they were; and anyway, they probably couldn't change if they'd wanted to.

  "Fellow spacers," said Daniel in a formally friendly tone, "I regret this inconvenience, but the security of Cinnabar demands it. You were being used by unscrupulous foreigners in a fashion which would certainly have led to your execution as traitors to the Republic."

  He paused to breathe, but he wasn't giving up his virtual podium. The captain of the Bonaventure had adjusted the freighter's sending head, but its packets of coherent light were still missing the Sissie's receptors.

  No matter: the civilians had nothing important to say except, "Yes sir!" The combination of dire threats coupled with unmistakably lethal force should be sufficient to frighten them into doing just that.

  "I am transmitting course calculations to you," Daniel continued, "now."

  He hit a virtual key, dispatching the material he'd queued before taking over the communication duties. Adele wondered if the Bonaventure would be able to handle the change—any change. In fairness to the captain, the freighter hadn't been so terribly out of position when it arrived at this present stage of the voyage.

  "This will take you to your planned destination, Zenobia," Daniel said, "but in a single transit. The Princess Cecile will wait till you're under way, then meet you in Zenobia orbit and give you further instructions. Under no circumstances are you to land on Zenobia or to do any other thing than what I have told you. Please acknowledge your receipt and acceptance of my orders ASAP, over."

  Three ships responded instantly with versions of "Received and accepted." The Bonaventure's reply was so curt that it could scarcely have been anything else—though the actual message would have to wait for Adele to run the visual imagery through a conversion program.

  The captain of the Gerdis said, "Captain Leary, you have no authority over my vessel."

  "Break!" said Daniel. "Sun, one round and don't hit them, over."

  The freighter captain was saying, "My orders come from—"

  "Roger, Six!"

  "—the agent from whom I received my contract. It seems to me you're acting more like a pirate than—"

  WHANG!

  "Bloody hell, Leary!" The civilian's hectoring tone of an instant before had risen to a bleat.

  "Gerdis, I don't have time to argue," Daniel said in a voice like an avalanche, "and neither do you. Either you will accept my orders, or I will launch missiles, and if by some chance you escape them, I will infallibly hunt you down and hang you. I'm a Leary of Bantry, and you have my word on it! Over!"

  "Received and understood," the civilian said. "Preparing to execute the course change. Gerdis out."

  Daniel gripped the fascia plate of his console for a moment, his eyes closed. When he opened them, he looked toward Adele and grinned. She acknowledged with a nod, but as usual she was watching her friend's image inset onto her display.

  "Ship, this is Six," Daniel said over the general push. "We'll wait till all the transports have gotten under way, then proceed to Zenobia to meet them."

  He cleared his throat, then continued, "Now—I won't pretend that it's going to be simple after we extract in the Zenobia System. I expect the Palmyrene forces to keep their distance for the present because the transports won't be able to land if the planetary defenses are alerted. If I'm wrong, we may find the whole Horde waiting for us. We'll deal with the situation as it arises. Up Cinnabar, Sissies!"

  "Up Cinnabar! rang through the ship. Adele shouted also. This sort of display no longer embarrassed her. Yes, of course it was a tribal bonding ritual—but she was no longer Esme Rolfe Mundy's daughter, she was a valued warrior of her tribe.

  She couldn't imagine how Daniel would go about fighting the entire Palmyrene fleet if that was what they found above Zenobia, but she was sure he would try.

  And Signals Officer Adele Mundy would be fighting beside him.

  CHAPTER 20: Above Zenobia

  "Extracting in thirty, repeat, three-zero seconds," said Cazelet. Daniel had left Vesey in control of entry into Zenobian space, and she had apparently passed the duty on to the midshipman under her in the Battle Direction Center.

  "Extracting!"

  Daniel's body jangled excruciatingly, as though all of his bones had shattered and the splinters were migrating outward through his muscles; he felt his breath catch. Then the Princess Cecile was in sidereal space, a Plot Position Indicator filled the center of the command display, and the ripping, blazing, pain was done for the time being.

  Each extraction was different. Daniel didn't recall one of what were by now many hundreds which he could describe as pleasant, though many hadn't been really painful. He'd been in the airlock when the Sissie dropped onto the Palmyrene convoy; that time he'd felt as though his body had dissolved into soap bubbles which were leaking through the joints of his hard suit. That had been disconcerting but not awful.

  He shook himself. This time had been awful, but it was over and he had work to do.

  The destroyer Z 46 was in powered orbit around the planet, holding at 1 g to maintain the health of her crew. She was already hailing the Princess Cecile. A text crawl across the bottom of Daniel's display read, Unidentified vessel, this is AFS Z 46. State your business, over.

  More interesting to Daniel as a tactician was the Z 42, the other element of the Fleet's Zenobia detachment. She was in freefall orbit, trailing the outermost of Zenobia's three tiny moons closely enough that vessels with poor sensor suites might not distinguish ship from satellite. Daniel hadn't been aboard a Palmyrene cutter, but similar vessels in the local trade of other regions had poor electronics throughout.

  Adele was already speaking forcefully to someone on the other end of her connection, but Daniel knew that only by the way her lips moved. She'd raised the sound-cancelling privacy curtain around her console, and she wasn't copying him on the transmission.

  Cory, at the astrogation console, looked groggy from the extraction, but his voice was firm as he said, "Z 46, this is Cinnabar yacht Princess Cecile returning to Zenobia. Please hold for Captain Leary, over."

  Cory had copied his transmission to Daniel on a two-way link instead of using the command channel to inform the other officers as Adele might have done, but that wasn't so serious a problem that it had to be
corrected immediately. Captain von Gleuck could be a serious problem. Daniel didn't need close-up imagery to know that both Alliance destroyers were targeting the newcomer with guns and missiles.

  "AFS Z 46, this is Daniel Leary, over," Daniel said. His voice had the cheerful lilt that came naturally to him. He was juggling a great number of plates, but for the moment they remained in the air.

  "Go ahead, Leary," said a different voice through the modulated-laser link. "This is von Gleuck, over."

  "Otto . . . ," said Daniel. He'd hoped that von Gleuck himself would be on the circuit—hoped so hard that he could almost say that he'd counted on it. Though if necessary, he would have managed; it was an article of faith with him that he would manage. "Very shortly there'll be five Cinnabar freighters—

  A red caret pulsed on the PPI at a point 280,000 miles from Zenobia. Nothing was at that place now. Vesey had highlighted the disruption in sidereal space-time which indicated that a vessel was preparing to extract from the Matrix there.

  "—arriving, and I think one is doing so as we speak. I ask you as the senior Alliance officer present to allow these ships to land on Zenobia under my supervision. You have my word that this course will have the best long-term result for the continuance of the present friendship between our nations. Ah—and for the independence of Zenobia also, though that isn't my primary concern at present. Leary over."

  The problem—which Autocrator Irene had very carefully contrived—was the transports. While the troops aboard them were clearly hostile and could be dealt with as violently as von Gleuck pleased, the hulls and at least some of the ships' officers were entitled to the protection of the Republic of Cinnabar.

  There had been Senators, and there were many Cinnabar citizens, who opposed the Treaty of Rheims. The destruction of Cinnabar ships and lives would almost certainly reignite the war.

  There was a noticeable silence, during which the caret on the display because a blip bearing the legend Sarah H. Gerdis. Someone aboard the Z 46 hailed the transport; the signals officer, most likely, operating on the instructions he'd received when the destroyer took station.