"Help me out of this thing!" Adele said even before the inner hatch was fully open. She didn't mind wearing the airsuit at her console—it'd be uncomfortable, but personal comfort had never concerned her. That the suit kept her from getting at her data unit—and why hadn't she left it behind when she went onto the hull?—was another matter.
She needn't have spoken: Tovera, Cazelet, and Cory—who'd stripped off his gauntlets in the airlock—were already at work on her catches.
"Mistress, I'm going to lift you," Cory said—and did so, tilting her back as though she were sitting at her console. When Adele's feet came off the floor, Tovera tugged down the lower half of the suit; Cory shifted and Rene pulled the remainder from her torso.
They worked well as a team. The midshipman was well experienced with suits and Tovera could be expected to accomplish any physical task efficiently, but Adele had just learned something important about Cazelet.
She smiled as she settled onto her console. How nice that what she'd learned was positive. It wasn't always that way.
Daniel was absorbed in computations, and Sun in the console adjacent to hers was rotating the turrets to make sure the guns were ready. Rather than ask either of them what was going on, Adele echoed the command display onto her own. In truth, even when the person talking to her was a friend whom she trusted implicitly, she felt more comfortable with electronic data than she did spoken words.
The astrogation display was gibberish, but Daniel had inset the Plot-Position Indicator; that showed illuminated beads maneuvering at the edge of the minefield protecting Diamondia. The three red beads were careted with the names of RCN vessels, the Aldgate, Ludgate, and Moorgate. The names meant nothing to Adele and there wasn't time just now to call up full particulars.
The four blue pips weren't careted, which meant they'd turned off their IFF. Adele sniffed as her wands moved. As usual she'd slaved her console to her personal data unit, but that was just for comfort: she was adequately quick with any input device. A dumb machine might not be able to identify an uncooperative target at a light-hour's distance, but she was Adele Mundy.
If the ships had been closer, she'd have pinged the message drones that all but the very smallest vessels carried. A careful officer could disable that automatic facility, but with the exception of Adele herself she'd never seen anyone bother. Most captains didn't seem to know it existed.
That wasn't an answer for the present, since the signal and reply would take two hours. She'd make do with passive intelligence, the electronic signatures of the vessels themselves.
Adele grimaced as her wands sorted and compared. If she hadn't been in such a hurry to question Cory out of others' hearing, she'd have done a full-spectrum search as soon as the Sissie extracted into sidereal space. What'd taken Daniel fifteen minutes to notice would've been obvious to her immediately.
Still, she'd spent the fifteen minutes usefully. If Cory'd given the wrong answers, she or Tovera would've had to deal with the problem. A corvette on a mission of this sort couldn't afford an officer whose tongue could be bought. Grounding Cory on Diamondia might've been an adequate solution, but that risked leaving the problem for someone less prepared for it. Adele was glad not to have gone down that road.
A starship is a living community with the need to maintain its environment besides all the requirements of a ground-based military post. Each type of electric motor—and there were hundreds on even a small ship—has a unique frequency. To an analyst with a collection of templates and the skill to isolate one source at a time from an electronic hash, the cumulative symphony was as sure an identifier as close-range visuals.
Adele's fingers twitched and twitched again, cross-checking data before transmitting them to the command console. The Cora, the Inca, the Cazique—
And finally the large vessel, the Stein. Its volume of signatures slowed identification, though in the long run it was absolutely certain.
Daniel didn't turn or reply, but his image grinned in satisfaction when the data flashed onto his display. He brought up an attack board and selected one of the four plans already prepared, then announced, "Ship, there's an engagement going on above Diamondia, three Alliance sloops backed by a light cruiser going after some mine-tenders from Admiral James' squadron. That doesn't seem like fair odds to me, so we're going to take a hand. Prepare to insert in thirty, that's three-zero, seconds."
His fingers slammed down on the Execute button. "Break," he continued, now looking at Adele's icon on his display. "Mundy, I want you to signal the friendlies as soon as we extract, telling them who we are and requesting passage. I'm not worried about them popping at us with whatever they've got for guns, but our course'll take us into the planetary defense array very quickly. Can you handle that while I'm busy with the attack board? Over."
"Yes, Daniel," Adele said, preparing her gear. That wasn't proper protocol, but she'd apologize when she had time.
Normally she'd rely on laser communicators, one emitter to each of the RCN vessels, but under the circumstances she'd better double the message with tight-beam microwave. It didn't sound as though there was any margin for error, and any ship could have part of its communications suite fail.
Adele smiled coldly. It wouldn't bother her to die—indeed, if they triggered a nuclear mine, she probably wouldn't even be aware of it. But in the unlikely event that there was an afterlife, she'd be in certain Hell to realize that she'd been sloppy in performing her last task.
She was still smiling when a voice shouted, "Up RCN!" The Princess Cecile returned to the Matrix as the first stage in its attack run.
As the Sissie flickered out of the sidereal universe, Daniel took an instant to eye Borries's attack solutions. They were actually quite good, but they postulated that the Sissie might extract from the Matrix well in-planet from where Daniel proposed.
That wasn't going to happen—or at any rate if it did, they wouldn't be launching any missiles. The Pellegrinian was allowing for Diamondia's atmosphere: it'd destroy a vessel trying to extract within it. He'd forgotten the planetary defense array that extended much farther up from the surface, however. It was hostile unless and until somebody directed its controller to let them through.
Daniel felt the charge on the hull build as the corvette brought itself into equivalence with the sidereal universe. "Extracting in three-zero seconds!" Vesey announced from the BDC, but everybody in the veteran crew could feel it happening. It was an extremely short insertion, but the distance would've taken weeks to traverse in normal space.
The Sissie seemed to shake herself. Daniel turned his eyes to the attack board, frozen into an approximation of the situation they'd find when they reappeared. The computer had extrapolated it from the course, rate and position of the vessels at the moment the corvette entered the Matrix and lost contact with the sidereal universe.
The display showed their point of extraction and initial course as being what Daniel'd predicted they'd be. At less than sixty light-minutes decent astrogators—and Daniel was much better than that—could come very close to their intention, but it'd be fantasy to expect that missiles programmed before inserting into the Matrix would hit their target. He'd need to refine his solution after they extracted.
The attack board flashed live; the approximation remained as a ghost image until Daniel switched it off. The PPI in a corner of the display sharpened from pearly radiance to a real three-dimensional chart; icons bloomed across the top of the screen as Adele connected with the RCN support vessels. She didn't copy her transmission to him since she knew he was busy.
The High Drive slammed on, nearly trebling Daniel's weight. Vesey was decelerating at maximum output or very nearly so, delaying the corvette's entry into the minefield as much as possible. Though they'd made this last insertion on a minimal rig, four of the twenty-four mainsails and nothing above them, they were still going to lose yards if not antennas very shortly. The antennas might've been able to take it if he'd doubled the standing rigging, but there hadn't been time.
First things first.
The Alliance attack on the mine-tenders had required either skill or luck. If the cruiser and her escorts had maneuvered close to Diamondia in normal fashion, the RCN support vessels would've dropped back onto the surface before they were in danger. The attackers must've launched themselves from their base on Zmargadine Three in a single transit to Diamondia. An overshot would've put them in the minefield.
It wouldn't be a coincidence that the sloops were twenty years old and the cruiser was older than that. The Alliance admiral clearly regarded them as expendable if necessary in the cause of harassing the RCN squadron.
The cruiser's 15-cm guns would batter the mine-tenders to junk if they stayed in vacuum, and if they locked themselves into braking orbits to land they'd be sitting ducks for Alliance missiles.
The process of returning to sidereal space normally took between forty-five seconds and a minute. An enemy keeping a close lookout for anomalies in the electromagnetic spectrum could initiate an attack before the extracting vessel was able to respond.
The Alliance ships had no reason to expect they'd be attacked from the Matrix, nor was their training good enough that they were prepared for something they didn't expect. The cruiser's four 15-cm guns continued to track the Moorgate, firing whenever the tubes cooled enough to be reloaded, even after Daniel called, "Ship, launching two!"
The Sissie rang from paired hammer-blows five seconds apart. Water, flash-heated to steam, ejected the missiles from the corvette's two launching tubes. Their High Drive motors lighted when they were safely clear of the vessel, spluttering back a blue haze of antimatter particles which hadn't been destroyed in the reaction chambers.
Two more missiles rumbled down rollerways from the magazine to the tubes. "Borries, take over," Daniel shouted. "BDC, I have the conn, out!"
He wanted to do it all. He couldn't and he didn't have to, he had first-rate officers, but there hadn't been time to explain exactly what he had in mind. In truth, all Daniel had in mind was to react to the situation as it appeared when they extracted from the Matrix—launch missiles, swing the corvette into a landing pattern, and evade the Alliance response.
There still wasn't an Alliance response. My, we've really caught them with their pants down.
The three Alliance sloops were in polar orbits around Diamondia, well outside the range of the mines. They weren't shooting because at this range their 10-cm plasma cannon wouldn't be effective even against 200-ton mine-tenders.
The Stein was shadowing the Moorgate, slashing with 15-cm bolts. The mine-tender couldn't accelerate without rising into a higher orbit, nor could she decelerate without the atmosphere limiting her ability to maneuver. Plasma bolts would rupture the hull, probably sooner rather than later; whereupon the cruiser would transfer her attentions to the next of her victims.
Destroying three auxiliaries wouldn't have much practical effect on the siege, but it'd raise the spirits of Alliance crews stuck in a dangerous hardship posting. Even better from the Alliance viewpoint, it'd depress Admiral James' personnel. It'd be suicide for the ships of the RCN squadron to try to reinforce the mine-tenders. Even a battleship lifting through the atmosphere would be unable to defend itself against missiles launched from orbit.
Daniel reduced thrust to 1.5 g and set the antennas to retract so that the Sissie could land, assuming things worked out. If everything went as it should, the process—sails furling, yards rotating parallel with the antennas, and all folding down against the hull—would be automatic.
Even on a good day something jammed, though, and after Vesey's hard braking they'd be lucky if all four deployed antennas hadn't bent too badly to telescope. Woetjans was on the hull with her top people; they'd be able to clear problems even though the present deceleration was still significant.
Whatever happened now, the Princess Cecile wouldn't be able to reenter the Matrix.
"Princess Cecile, you're cleared through!" said an unfamiliar voice on Daniel's commo helmet. As usual, Adele was controlling access to him. She'd let this one pass, though, instead of handling it herself. "This is Delacroix Control, you're cleared through the array, out!"
Borries clanged out two more missiles. Daniel had calculated the corvette's extraction so that they'd enter normal space on the opposite side of the planet from the Stein and in a reciprocal orbit. The ships would pass within three thousand miles of one another, well within the range that the cruiser's plasma cannon could be punishing. It was a necessary risk but a calculated one: if the Stein turned her guns on the corvette, the corvette's missiles would almost certainly destroy her.
The cruiser's captain knew that as well as Daniel did. The 15-cm guns shifted from the Moorgate to the incoming missiles.
The Stein's High Drive and plasma thrusters lit together at full output. Under normal circumstances that'd be a waste of reaction mass—the thrusters weren't nearly as efficient as matter/antimatter annihilation. The Alliance captain clearly realized that if the cruiser didn't get out of the kill zone as quickly as possible, that reaction mass would merely add to the size of the ball of wreckage expanding away from missile impacts.
The 15-cm guns were firing at high rate, spewing plasma bolts before the barrels had properly cooled from the previous rounds. This was certain to erode the tubes and might well lead to an explosion that damaged the turret, but need outweighed the risk.
The corvette's first missile burst before burnout; the second had just begun to separate into three pieces, widening the attack's footprint, when the guns caught them. Solid fragments caromed away, driven by the thrust of their vaporized mass.
The Sissie sliced past the minefield in a descending spiral; the mine-tenders were already diving for the surface. Borries launched a third pair of missiles.
"Cease fire!" Daniel ordered, his hands busy adjusting the High Drive, swinging the corvette's bow down slightly so that they'd enter the atmosphere on an even keel. "Borries, this is Six, cease fire!"
The Stein staggered as a mast snapped and carried away other rigging with it. The thrusters shut down, leaving a broad track of shimmering ions behind the glint of the High Drive exhaust.
Daniel hadn't been sure how the sloops would react—he hadn't attacked or even threatened them—but he was gratified to see they were accelerating away from the planet also. That wasn't cowardice: an Alliance corvette never would've attacked four RCN vessels. The sloops' captains assumed that the Sissie was the leading vessel of a powerful force.
The Sissie's third pair of missiles were going to miss because the cruiser'd reduced acceleration abruptly, but the guns hammered them anyway. The sloops were already losing definition, fading into the Matrix; they weren't going anywhere, just away so that they wouldn't be caught when a large RCN squadron extracted. A moment later the Stein followed, sure that further missiles couldn't reach it before insertion was complete.
Contact between vessels, let alone combat, was possible only in sidereal space. A ship that escaped into the Matrix—it was extremely vulnerable during the minute or so of insertion—could lurk there until its air ran out. The Alliance ships might struggle toward Z3 using dead reckoning from their last recorded star sights or simply hide for a day or so before slipping briefly into the human universe to make proper astrogational computations. Either way, they were out of action.
The outer airlock clanged; Woetjans was bringing in her crew, so the rig'd been stowed for landing. Daniel'd have had to adjust the Sissie's angle of descent shortly if they hadn't come in, and he hadn't been thinking about it.
He felt himself relax. He hadn't been thinking about landing formalities either, and it was past time that he do so. "Signals—" he began.
"Princess Cecile, this is Port Delacroix Control," said an unfamiliar female voice. "You are cleared for Berth 17 in the Outer Harbor, not 12 in Main as you were told before. We're bringing the Moorgate in there because she can't maneuver to her regular berth, over."
"Delacroix Control, this is Princess Cecile," said Daniel. He should've known he didn't have to worry about communications chores when he had a battle to fight. "Acknowledged that we're clear for Berth 17, Outer Harbor. Over."
There was a pause. The corvette slid deeper into the atmosphere which began to buffet her seriously. A starship wasn't streamlined even when closed down for landing, so the rig had to be built to take a battering. The crew got used to it perforce.
Instead of, "Acknowledged, out," as Daniel expected, the ground controller said, "The Admiral says, 'Well done, Princess Cecile, ' and will Captain Leary please attend him in the Residence at his earliest convenience. A car will be waiting, over."
"Acknowledged," Daniel said, feeling a smile spread across his face. "Princess Cecile out."
Hogg, who'd been sitting on the jump seat attached to the back of the command console, got up and started toward the hatch. The Sissie was pitching like a skiff in a storm, but he kept walking. Hogg had ridden many skiffs in many storms.
"Guess I'll lay out your Whites, master," he called over back the wind roar.
Daniel smiled even more broadly.