Adele watched theStager Brothers begin its attack run. Despite Captain Stout's prickliness, his approach through the top levels of the atmosphere was as smooth as that of any starship could be.
She smiled. Perhaps being prickly was a necessary part of being good. There were certainly people who'd found Adele Mundy difficult over the years, and even Daniel ruffled feathers with his focus on accomplishing the mission regardless of proprieties.
Ever since theColumbine came alongside, theLadouceur had been ringing like the interior of a steel drum. A warship in action was always noisy, but this time the missiles bumping down the rollerway were being transferred to the smaller ship rather than sliding into the cruiser's own launching tubes. Woetjans had all her riggers on the hull, manhandling the projectiles across the gap separating the ships and clamping them into theColumbine 's hull mounts.
Adele didn't imagine the effort was going to be of any use, though. Certainly none of the previous attacks had been.
"Adele?" said Daniel unexpectedly. She'd carefully avoided interrupting him at a time when he had his hands full. Out of squeamishness she hadn't even echoed the command display as she sometimes did from curiosity. Since things were going so badly, it would've felt to her like staring at a friend who'd just upset the table at a formal dinner.
"Yes, Daniel?" she said, replying on the same two-way link and pleased to ignore protocol.
TheStager Brothers had made two circuits of Churchyard, cutting progressively deeper as if shaving thin slices from the atmosphere. As Stout started his third orbit, he launched his four plasma missiles. This was no part of Adele's job, but simply as a matter of interest she'd expanded an image of the vessel coming around the curve of the planet.
The only communications that she had to monitor right now were the excited chatter of both the Alliance and Bagarian forces. The Alliance voices were predictably in a better humor, but nothing important was being said by either side.
"I'm going to be taking charge of theColumbinefor the next attack," Daniel said. "Can you keep me in direct touch with the entire squadron?"
One of theStager Brothers ' missiles didn't appear to separate until the ship drove up through the atmosphere again on gimbaled thrusters. The missile continued for a few moments on a ballistic course, then began to tumble; it quickly broke up.
"One moment," said Adele, because she didn't give Daniel a certain answer without knowingeverything about theColumbine 's commo suite. She'd never had occasion to learn that information before now But she'd gathered it, because it was information and that was what she did, gather information against need. In the particular instance she'd thought knowing the particulars of the Bagarian ships might help her communicate with them, though in the event she'd decided that the 20-meter band was all she could count on.
The thrusters of theStager Brothers ' remaining three missiles lighted. One blew up three seconds later, rocking the ship that launched it. The blast didn't appear to do serious damage, but Captain Stout's torrent of profanity was justifiable if pointless.
Adele brought up the data on theColumbine and considered it coldly. She smiled: she did everything coldly. Even when others might think that she'd lost her temper, she was really quite cold inside.
In the particular instance, the data was better than she'd feared it might be. She said, "Daniel, theColumbine has a working laser communicator. It's a single-head device, but theLadouceur can retransmit to the rest of the squadron without a noticeable lag. Oh!"
"Is there a problem, Signals?" Daniel said. He remained on the private channel, but he'd slipped into formality to jog her out of her silence.
The problem is that I have to be at both ends of the transmission in order to make the relay work.
The thruster of theStager Brothers ' third missile cut off abruptly. Without power for its gyroscope, the missile wobbled, swapped ends, and tore itself into a shower of fragments. They blazed white with the friction of their passage through the atmosphere.
Instead of replying to Daniel directly, Adele switched manually to the command channel and said, "Cory, I'll be away from my console for a considerable length of time. Until I return, can you relay laser transmissions from theColumbine to the rest of the squadron if I set the system up for you? Over."
"Ah," said Cory. "I'm sure I can, sir, over."
"Negative, Officer Mundy," Daniel said. He didn't exactly shout, but he meant to be heard and obeyed. "Your presence with theLadouceur's sensor and commo suites will be absolutely necessary if something unpredictable occurs. You willnotbe leaving the bridge. If that means a gap in my control of the rest of the squadron, then that's still the better choice, over."
TheStager Brothers ' last missile began to describe a slow spiral. Adele was too busy to magnify her image of it, but she'd seen several rounds from theColumbine andForsyte 14 fail in the same fashion. Exhaust had eaten a hole in the thruster nozzle so that plasma was pushing sideways as well as straight back. As Adele'd learned to expect, the missile carved increasingly wider circles until a gush of flame blew the whole back end away.
All sixteen missiles from the three Bagarian ships had failed before they got within ten miles of the surface of Churchyard. Adele didn't know what Daniel thought he could accomplish since the problem wasn't in the way the rounds had been aimed, but that wasn't her job to determine.
"Captain, I don't think Cory can keep theColumbine 's sender focused on us, on theLadouceur, if both ships are maneuvering," she said. "Hecan handle the relay, that's automated. I-"
"Captain Leary?" Rene Cazelet interrupted. Adele knew Rene'd added himself to the command channel that linked all the commissioned and warrant officers aboard, but she hadn't given the matter any thought when she moved the discussion there to include Cory. "I can direct the head manually. I don't mean to imply criticism of Mister Cory; your Cinnabar naval equipment is automated, but I trained in the merchant service with apparatus very like what theColumbinehas. Over."
"Adele?" Daniel said, back on the two-way link.
Adele looked at the image of Rene Cazelet on her display. She knew that she could meet his eyes directly by just looking up and glancing across the bridge, but she preferred the electronic semblance. His expression was clear and open; and underneath that, afraid. He was afraid that she wouldn't think he was competent.
Which meant thathe really thought that he could do the job. Well, he had more data on the subject that she did, so she might as well accept his judgment.
"All right," Adele said. "Cazelet, accompany Captain Leary to theColumbine. Keep a real-time connection with me, and do everything else he tells you to. Over."
Or did she mean, "Out"?
"Yes, mistress!" the boy said as he leaped from his console. He was beaming as he strode to the suit locker in the rotunda beyond the bridge hatch.
"Lieutenant Liu, you have the conn," Daniel said as he rose. Hogg got up also. Daniel added, "Hogg, you can stay aboard theLadouceur. Space may be tight on the Columbine's bridge, and there's nothing for you to do, over."
"Sure there is, young master," Hogg said, speaking loudly over the sound of the air handler. "That wog captain may not want to give you his seat, admiral's pips or no."
As he spoke, Hogg pulled his big folding knife from a pocket. It had a handguard in the form of a knuckleduster.
"I'll come along to reason with him," Hogg concluded, tossing the knife-still closed-in the air and catching it again.
"Captain Julian, gentlemen," said Daniel as he and Hogg stepped out of the airlock. They'd taken their helmets off before the hatch undogged, so he didn't have to struggle with that task while the three men inColumbine 's forward compartment stared at him in surprise. He hadn't warned Julian by radio because he shared Hogg's opinion that the Bagarian captain wouldn't be in agreement with his plan.
"What're you doing here?" David Julian demanded. He struggled awkwardly to rise from his console. It was placed in the far bow facing inward, so that the captain seated there could see everybody in the forward compartment.
"I'm going to take theColumbine in on this run, Captain Julian," Daniel said cheerily. "I regret the suddenness of this."
In fact Daniel regretted a lot of things, certainly including the fact that he was cutting corners in a fashion that could only be described as discourteous to a fellow spacer. Admiral James and the Bagarian Republic both depended on clearing the cluster of Alliance bases, though, and this seemed to be the only way to do that in a reasonable length of time.
"You'll do nothing of the sort!" Julian said in a scandalized tone. "This is my ship. I own her!"
Daniel stepped around the console, noting with relief that the seat was so oversized that he could use it without stripping off his hard suit. That was a common feature on tramp freighters, since the crew could rarely depend on the climate control system or the vessel remaining airtight either one. If the controls couldn't be operated by people wearing suits, they couldn't be operated at all.
Captain Julian wasn't suited up, but he filled and overflowed the console; Daniel instinctively sucked in his gut. Mentally, he murmured a promise toreally cut back on his meals. Mind, he'd made the same promise every time he'd put on his Dress Whites during the past six months.
"He most certainly isnotthe owner of theColumbine!" Adele's voice rattled from the implant in Daniel's left ear. "He sold the ship to the government for one point five million ostrads, on the basis of a valuation by Petrus Lascaux. Who appears to be Julian's brother-in-law!"
"I'm very sorry, Captain," Daniel said. He didn't suppose he sounded any sorrier than he felt. "Nonetheless you knew this might happen when you sold theColumbine to the government for one and a half million ostrads."
Because Julian had risen to confront Daniel, the console's empty seat was between them. Daniel set his armored right foot on it, knowing the hard suit trumped the Bagarian's greater bulk.
The information from Adele didn't change anything but the words, though. Daniel would've commandeered a private vessel if he'd had to, counting on his admiral's rank to justify the action; or if not that, then success wiping the slate clean. If hedidn't succeed, he'd probably be dead and the question of whether he'd committed piracy wouldn't matter.
The airlock cycled again. It only held two suited figures at a time, so Adele's friend Cazelet had to come through after Daniel and Hogg had.
Julian clenched his fist and said, "You can get your Cinnabar ass off this ship, buddy, or-"
"Or what, lard-butt?" Woetjans said. "You're talking to Mister Leary. That means you keep a civil tongue in your head or somebody's likely to pull it out!"
"Who'reyou?" Julian said in a tone of wonderment. He lowered his arm, all bluster vanished.
Daniel half-rotated his body; the rigid suit kept him from glancing over his shoulder as he'd have done in street clothes. Cazelet was there, all right, but the bosun had entered ahead of him. She held the short come-along she'd been using to lever the plasma missiles into their cradles on the hull.
"Six, the kid here-"
She pointed a thumb over her shoulder; Cazelet hopped back. Behind them both, the airlock was cycling again.
"-told us what you were pulling. We sent his riggers onto theLaddie, but me'n four a' my crew are gonna handle the rig while you're aboard. Or handle any bloody thing at all, right?"
"Right!" said Daniel briskly. "Captain Julian, if you'll make yourself as comfortable as you can on one of the benches, we'll take care of business so that you can have your ship back."
Dasi and Barnes were the next pair of Sissies out of the airlock. Like the bosun, they carried the tools they'd been using out on the hull.
"We cast this tub loose from theLaddie, Six," Barnes said cheerfully. "Say, we going to put it to the wogs again?"
Dasi glanced at the two spacers who'd been in the compartment when Daniel arrived. "My buddy means Alliance wogs, not you lot," he said. He pursed his full lips in consideration. "That's right, ain't it, Six?"
"Perfectly correct, Dasi," Daniel said, checking the little freighter's systems. Cazelet settled himself on the console's jump seat; the controls on that side were already live, probably by accident.
The Power Room with the fusion bottle and a crew of three was theColumbine 's only other pressurized compartment. The engineer hadn't opened the hatch to see what was going on in the fore cabin and Daniel didn't see any reason to disturb him.
The aft two-thirds of the hull was partitioned into three separate holds, empty now except for crew stores. The total volume was slight. Bulk cargo would be slung externally, much as the missiles were being carried now.
The nozzle of Thruster Three was paper thin; theColumbine could make this attack using only the fore and aft pairs, but to lift with a full cargo requiring all six thrusters seemed a recipe for disaster. According to their internal diagnostics the four High Drive motors were fine, but a scan of the log indicated that Starboard Aft didn't develop better than 70% of its rated impulse. That could mean the pump was failing, the feed line had a blockage, or for that matter that there was an instrumentation flaw. Again, it didn't matter for now.
Sayer and Braun shambled out of the airlock. Anja Braun, a stocky woman who could kick her heel through a brick wall, looked at Woetjans and asked, "What you want us t'do, Chief?"
"Sit your butts down till I tell you," Woetjans growled. She slapped the come-along into the palm of her left glove. It was an idle gesture, but the two Bagarian spacers winced.
"Look," muttered Captain Julian, staring at his fingers interlaced over his heavy belly. "You can make me the goat if you like, I can't fight you. But it wasn't my approach that screwed the pooch on the first attack. The missiles're bloody useless, it's that simple."
"I agree that you're not to blame, Julian," Daniel said. He spread his hands over the console's virtual keyboard, making sure that he was aware of its subtle differences both from theSissie and from the cruiser he'd been commanding these past few weeks. "It's simply a case of, well-"
He shrunk the display and looked at Julian until the fellow turned and their eyes met.
"-if this attack fails, there'll be a move to crucify the foreigner who planned it, not so? And if I'm going to be hung for failing, then it's bloody well going to beme who fails."
In the air before him communication established pulsed in green letters. Daniel brought up his display and said, "Ladouceur, this is Columbine Six. Can you hear me, over?"
"Of course I can hear you, Columbine Six," Adele's voice rasped from the console's speakers. "If you want to address the squadron, just verbally key them and the relay will work automatically. Otherwise, you'll be speaking through me. As usual. Over."
"Roger, Signals," Daniel said, grinning as he so often did when dealing with Adele. "Ship, prepare to attack."
He cleared his throat, then said, "Squadron, this is Squadron Six. Columbine is taking the place ofHeartsease in the attack rota. Heartsease, set up your attack to follow that ofColumbine. Six out."
Daniel pressed the Execute button; the High Drive motors fired on preset angles, dropping theColumbine toward the surface of Churchyard. Let's see how long the Alliance garrison continues to laugh…
Freighters didn't have true attack boards; Daniel'd adapted the pilotry display as if he were setting up a landing. That was basically what he was doing, except that if things worked out it'd be six plasma missiles landing in Hafn Teobald instead of theColumbine herself.
The vessel began to slide into the atmosphere. The air wasn't thick enough to buffet the hull yet, but Daniel heard theping s of antimatter in the exhaust disintegrating gas molecules in the throats of the motors. He didn't switch out of High Drive yet because he didn't trust the plasma thrusters.
Daniel expected Captain Julian to complain, but the Bagarian simply sat with a glum expression. He might also stay long in High Drive on his approaches, for the same reason.
When the pinging increased in frequency to that of water coming to a boil, Daniel shut down the High Drive, waited three seconds on a ballistic course, and finally lit the thrusters. They came on line raggedly, as he'd more or less expected.
He'd been afraid of a late power blip from one of the motors. If by bad luck only one thruster was making power at the moment when a High Drive motor fired late, the combined impulse could rotate a small vessel like theColumbine on her axis. Better a long freefall than to take that needless risk.
"Columbine Six, the antiship battery at Hafn Teobald is tracking you," Adele said in a cool tone. "This was the battery's practice with earlier runs as well. None of the Alliance communications indicate an intention to launch this time either." A pause. "Ah, Ladouceurout."
Daniel smiled. It no longer struck him as odd that in the middle of an attack he was getting reports on the enemy's internal communications.
TheColumbine was well into the first circuit of her attack and was rocking noticeably. The choppiness wasn't as bad as he'd have expected on thePrincess Cecile, though the corvette was a somewhat heavier vessel; the outboard-mounted missiles were acted as roll dampers.
What would Admiral Vocaine say if I recommended that he recruit librarians for signals duty in all RCN vessels?
Daniel began to laugh. Julian spluttered something which Daniel couldn't make out over the snarl of air jumbling about the rigging. The sound may not have been words at all, of course, just generalized amazement. Woetjans clapped the Bagarian on the shoulder and looked smug.
They'd completed their second circuit and started into a third, going deeper than the previous runs. TheColumbine was slowing, so the roughness wasn't noticeably worse despite the thicker atmosphere.
"Columbine Six, Command Headquarters has put the missile battery on launch warning but haven't directed them to launch," Adele's voice trembled. "Under current protocols they won't launch unless the target drops beneath three thousand meters. Over."
"Roger, Signals," Daniel said as his fingers adjusted flow to Thrusters One and Two, raising the bow slightly. "We're not going to come close to that, over."
The warble in Adele's voice was an artifact of atmospheric distortion on the laser signal. An RCN warship's software would've reshaped the signal into its original form, but theColumbine had nothing so sophisticated. Well, she didn't need it; at least with Cazelet handling commo duties, the freighter's rig was more than adequate.
"Ship," Daniel said, "prepare to launch. Launching one-"
The ship bucked into a roll to port as the lower starboard missile separated.
"Launching two-"
Two was the upper port missile, thrown clear by the ship's rotation.
"Three "Four "Five "Six "Ship, we're pulling up!" Daniel cried as he slammed keys to activate the preset course. "RCN forever!"
His Sissies cheered over the roaring thrusters. Maybe some of the Bagarians did too, though it wasn't the most politic thing to have shouted now that Daniel had time to think about it.
Bloody hell, they were in the middle of a battle. The six missiles they'd just launched were running straight and true as theColumbine lifted back out of Churchyard's atmosphere.
"RCN forever!" Daniel repeated. This time he was sure the Bagarian spacers were cheering along with his own.
Adele noticed the next of the Bagarian ships dropping into the atmosphere while theColumbine was only beginning her ascent. She didn't know whether or not that was a problem, so she said, "Columbine Six, theHeartsease is attacking already. Over."
"Thank you, Ladouceur," Daniel said, his voice a little strained. He was accelerating hard, of course. "I've got them on my display. I didn't intend such close separations, but I guess it's all right so long as one of us knows what he's doing. Six out."
The jabbering on the ground wasn't quite as boastfully contented as it'd been an hour earlier, but the Alliance garrison wasn't really worried. TheColumbine had driven deeper into the atmosphere than the five runs that'd preceded this one, and now theHeartsease was coming in immediately on theColumbine 's heels.
Neither was a threat on the face of it, given the complete failure of the attack to this point. They were changes, though, and nobody likes to see a change when everything's been going well. Especially when the situation involves other people shooting at you.
Since theColumbine was out of the battle until it reloaded, the antiship battery shifted its tracking to theHeartsease. The latter was one of the smaller Bagarian vessels and carried only three missiles. It'd been a late arrival, and though it appeared to receive signals, it hadn't emitted any since the seventh-planet rendezvous.
In past years Adele would've assumed the ship's transmitter had gone out, but she'd seen enough of fringe-world navies to realize that the captain might be in a snit and refusing to respond verbally. That would be insane, of course, but it was by no means impossible.
TheColumbine 's six rounds had been tracking smoothly, but the second one launched slowly diverged from the path of the others. There wasn't anything obviously wrong with it; perhaps its gyrocompass had gone awry. Still, if the others The fifth missile dived straight downward, splashing into the ocean half the planetary circumference short of Hafn Teobald. Adele felt a wash of disappointment.
Daniel had done all he could. Nobody was successful all the time, not even the most brilliant officer in the RCN. There'd be another way to overcome the Alliance forces, there was always another way. Daniel wouldn't stop-they'd none of them stop-until they'd found a way to TheColumbine 's first missile plunged into the Alliance base, striking theS81 amidships. There was a huge white flash, the friction of steel hitting steel at high velocity. The boat's hull sank, dragging the outriggers with it. An underwater blast emptied the slip momentarily of water and demolished one of the concrete piers.
The sea gushed back; an outrigger bobbed to the surface. Steam drifted across the harbor on the light breeze, the cloud expanding slowly.
Adele smiled in self-mockery. She should've given Daniel more credit. Though assuming failure as she'd just done wasn't a problem so long as she went ahead with her tasks regardless. As, of course, she always did.
High Drive missiles were expected to be on a ballistic course at impact, so they didn't have guidance systems. Despite their relative simplicity, the Bagarian plasma missilesdid have sensor-activated controls. They homed on modulated laser signals reflecting from the target. In this case the laser designators were on theLadouceur, not on the ships launching the missiles.
Given how crude the missiles were, Adele had wondered if the guidance system could possibly work well enough to matter. Apparently it would.
The third missile-the second was off-course, thirty miles to the west of Hafn Teobald-had been aimed at the antiship battery. Instead it slammed into the center of the tidal pond behind the site. Reflection from the water must've confused the homing system.
Adele's smile twitched. The shrieking terror of the battery captain talking to Alliance HQ was worth something, though.
The fourth missile hit Alliance Headquarters; the center of the sprawling, U-shaped building, unfortunately, since Adele by now knew that the real command center was in a bunker under the north wing. Nonetheless, it was very satisfying to watch the magnified image of the walls shattering in a pall of pulverized concrete. The roof of plastic sheeting fell in and began to burn.
The final missile was aimed at theCesare Rossarol; likely one or both of those which failed had targeted the vessel also. The cloud from theS81 's ruptured fusion bottle drifted over the destroyer, not concealing it but providing a medium to reflect the laser illuminator. The incoming missile spiked the center of the false bull's-eye and plunged into the far wall of the slip beyond theRossarol 's.
Chunks of concrete flew in all directions. The destroyer pitched and bucked, but apart from the shaking it must be unharmed.
TheHeartsease was starting her second circuit. Adele's interest in the attack had always been secondary to her duty of listening to intercepted Alliance communications. Now she manually keyed the 20-meter transmitter and shouted, "Heartsease, change direction! They're about to launch at you. Stop your attack now, stop!"
A plasma missile separated from theHeartsease. The ship rocked and threw off a second missile.
"Heartsease, pull up or do something! They're going to-"
The blast of an antiship missile ripped a huge divot from the ground behind the rotating launcher. The projectile itself was a needle glinting in the sunlight; shock diamonds formed in back of its triple nozzles, and far behind swelled a white blanket as the borate exhaust plume absorbed moisture from the air.
"Pull up, you fools!" Adele screamed. "Dodge, do something!"
She wasn't sure that theHeartsease would be able to do anything that'd help it survive. Inertia and air resistance might be binding it into a practically fixed course. But the crew ought to try instead of going on with what was effectively a march to the scaffold.
The third plasma missile dropped away from the Bagarian ship which shuddered as its captain started to pull up at the end of his attack run. The Alliance missile spitted it like an ice pick through an egg. The round depended on velocity, not an explosive warhead; it continued to scream upward into the stratosphere as a thin silver streak.
TheHeartsease flew apart, wrecked by its own speed once it'd been gutted. Chunks of hull and rigging battered each other to fragments that rained toward the surface. The initial impact had probably killed the whole crew; regardless, nothing human-even wearing a hard suit-could survive the hundred-thousand-foot fall.
Adele's face was grim. She'd tried to warn them, but they hadn't listened. It wasn't her fault, not as anybody else would judge blame.
Besides, people die in wars. She'd killed a lot of them herself…
One of the missiles from theHeartsease dropped; its thruster hadn't lighted. The second blew up after thirty seconds of operation. The third curved into a helical course that'd probably be twenty miles in diameter by the time it landed somewhere in the ocean west of Hafn Teobald.
"Squadron, this is Squadron Six," Daniel said crisply. "Well done, spacers, we've got their measure now. One more attack will do the job, but this time the entire bombardment flotilla will go in together and swamp the defenses. At the same time, theLadouceur, IndependenceandDeMarcewill approach at low level. The garrison'll panic, I expect, and if they don't we'll burn them out with plasma cannon regardless of what the bombardment missiles-"
"Like hell we will, you bloody Cinnabar madman!" Captain Seward shouted in fury. "You're just trying to get us all killed so that we can't tell the government that your notion of shooting down at Churchyard was a waste of time. I'm going back to Pelosi, and when I get there I'll call for you to be removed for unfitness. Out!"
TheStager Brothers had reloaded with plasma missiles from theSacred Independence while Daniel was attacking with theColumbine. Now it began to accelerate, its High Drive motors stabbing blue-white sparks into vacuum.
"Stager Six, this is Squadron Six," Daniel said sharply. TheColumbine was on what the Plot Position Indicator predicted to be an approach course with theLadouceur. "Shut down your motors soonest, Captain Stout. We'll be attacking all together after I work out courses, over."
Stout didn't answer; instead the bead markingStager Brothers faded off the PPI. Stout had fled from the sidereal universe.
The other small ships were vanishing also. Adele had seen how long it took their captains to plot a course; it seemed likely that all they were doing was getting out of the immediate vicinity of theLadouceur 's heavy cannon. None of them directly addressed Daniel or the cruiser; they were simply leaving.
"Admiral Leary," said Hoppler of theIndependence. It and theDeMarce were accelerating to gain useful velocity that they could multiply in the Matrix. "Because of a serious leak in my reaction mass tanks, I'm forced to return to Pelosi for repairs. I hope to greet you there soon on your arrival so that we can plan further operations against the common enemy. Hoppler out."
Sun turned from his console with a look of anguish on his face. "Mistress!" he said to Adele. "They're rats, they're running out on us! Can I ring their bell while they're still this side of the Matrix?"
"You may not," Adele said sharply. She didn't bother to say that the question was beyond her authority: itwasn't beyond her authority, her real authority at least. There wasn't a Sissie who wouldn't do as Mistress Mundy ordered, Daniel included. "We'll serve them out later, Sun, but not in that fashion."
She wasn't sure precisely how they'd even the score. Daniel wasn't the sort to send Hogg and Tovera to assassinate the captains who'd ignored his orders and fled. He wouldn't ask Lady Mundy to challenge the cowards to duels, either; but if he did ask that, she'd shoot Hoppler, Seward and the rest of them down with as little compunction as she'd killed a hundred other men and women in the course of her duty.
It didn't bother her in the least while she was doing it: she saw only a blur in her sight picture. The features didn't appear until late into the darkness, when the dead came to speak with her again.
TheDeMarce faded from the PPI; theIndependence was already gone and so were most of the light craft. TheForsyte 14 suddenly reappeared within the display, but that was simply because it hadn't had enough velocity in the sidereal universe to get any distance even with the help of the Matrix. It was accelerating at what appeared to be its maximum rate, now, and it didn't reply to Adele's attempts to raise it on short wave and laser. She didn't imagine that any response the captain made would be a useful one, of course, but she thought she ought to try.
"Ladouceur, this is Squadron Six," Daniel said. Adele thought he sounded weary, but that could be an artifact of the freighter's commo system. "TheColumbineis coming alongside. Mister Liu, have Captain Julian's riggers ready to transfer back aboard, if you will. Six out ."
Adele's algorithms caught the disruption of a ship extracting from the Matrix before the cruiser's own did, but only moments before: theLadouceur might be old, but she was a warship which'd been constructed and equipped to serve in the foremost navy of the human universe. Software had improved since then, but the real question has always been the skill of the person using the apparatus rather than the apparatus itself.
"Squadron Six!" Adele said. TheColumbine certainly didn't have the sort of electronics Daniel would need to deal with this, and she didn't imagine there'd be time for him to reboard the cruiser. Could she transfer the necessary data to him using the freighter's single-head laser transceiver? "A heavy ship's entered sidereal space three hundred… and six thousand miles from Churchyard. It's not one of our squadron. It's-oh."
She paused for a moment as she crosschecked the data cascading in from the new arrival; her data were entirely consistent. There hadn't been time yet for an optical identification, but Adele trusted her signals intelligence farther anyway.
"Daniel," she said, her voice clipped from embarrassment at having given a needless alarm, "the ship is theZwiedam, a former immigrant transport now owned by the Free State of Skye. I believe this is-"
"Skye Defendercalling Admiral Leary," announced the new arrival over tight-beam microwave. Adele relayed the message to theColumbine over the laser link. "This is Colonel Raymond Chatterjee reporting as ordered, over."
"Colonel, this is Squadron Six," Daniel replied with a cheerful bounce that hadn't been in his voice a moment before. "I'll be aboard my flagship inside half an hour. We'll shape course to some place we can discuss matters in greater comfort than I suspect you and your troops find in vacuum. Hold what you've got till then, if you don't mind."
In an even more ebullient tone he added, "I'm very glad of your arrival, Colonel. I think we'll now be able to turn the present bag of lemons into lemonade! Six out."