The Road of Danger-ARC (42 page)

Tovera, or Tovera’s mistress.

There was a jolt as a thruster fired a minuscule pulse. The
Sissie
had been rotating almost imperceptibly around its long axis; the motion stopped. The
Commune
, visible in the same true-scale image as the larger corvette, pulsed also.

“They’ve got it!” Sun cried from the gunnery console beside Adele’s. “I thought they were going to slip the cable or have it snap, but Six—and Five too, she’s doing great—brought us back together. Did you ever see anything so sweet?”

Unaided voice wouldn’t ordinarily be audible on a starship’s bridge, but in free fall with all unnecessary equipment shut down to keep from affecting the linkup, Adele heard her neighbor quite clearly. She had no business bothering with extraneous conversation: Cazelet was shadowing Vesey from the BDC and Cory was in the entry hold, prepared to act as required if something went wrong with the
Sissie
’s end of the cable. No one but Officer Mundy was surveying Alliance communications for threats.

Four figures had already reached the corvette, moving hand over hand on the line; another was starting across now, with others behind him. Adele grimaced.

“Explain what happened, if you would, Sun,” she said. She continued to scan the columns of oral information converted to text.

“They’d spliced five hundred-foot lines, mistress,” the gunner said, obviously glad for an audience. He chattering to control his nervousness as Adele—she smiled grimly—was listening to control her own. “But it was paying out because the ships were both moving a bit and there wasn’t time to splice in another. It wasn’t hawsers that could maybe take the strain, it was just shrouds, so it’d snap if they didn’t cast off in time. Well, that—”

Sun moved at the corner or Adele’s eyes. She didn’t look away from her duty, but she could imagine the shrug.

“—you remember what happened to Trent Johns when a line snapped, right?”

“Yes,” said Adele. She had seen people killed in various colorful fashions since she joined the RCN. Johns, a rigger who had been cut in half the long way by a beryllium monocrystal cable which whipped back after breaking, was probably the most memorable, though. She hadn’t realized how far the blood would splash under those conditions.

“Well, now they can all get aboard without casting off and linking again,” Sun said. “It’ll save time, maybe half an hour. And the only reason it’s that quick is because of how good Six is, and Five too.”

“Thank you,” said Adele. Four more suited figures, then a fifth, were coming over the line. The first pair and last pair were swinging hand over hand, but the one in the middle must be Tomas Grant: he was linked by short safety lines to the figures immediately in front of and behind him.

Much as I would be
, Adele thought.

Woetjans had carried airsuits from the corvette’s stores when she hauled over the line; she must be the large figure immediately preceding the rebel leader. That left an extra person coming toward the
Sissie
, but Daniel would have matters under control. He always had matters under control, even when it didn’t seem that was the case.

At the top of Adele’s display, along with the row of faces of the corvette’s officers, she had inset an icon for the Plot-Position Indicator. It pulsed orange to call attention to itself.

She brought the PPI up to full screen to see what change had triggered the alert. The
Sissie
’s sensors were reacting to the precursor effects of a ship transitioning from the Matrix to normal space. It was a hundred thousand miles out from Sunbright but significantly closer to the
Princess Cecile
herself.

“
Officer Mundy, this is Five
,” said Vesey on the command channel which included all the commissioned and warrant officers who were linked at the moment. “
Handle any necessary communications chores, if you will, over
.”

“Yes,” said Adele. She shrank the real-time images to an icon—she should have closed it down, but she was superstitiously afraid to—and brought the location of the incoming vessel to half-screen.

The highest likelihood was that the newcomer was a blockade runner which had chosen to make a close approach to Sunbright instead of initially extracting several light-minutes out to judge the position of the blockading ships. That could have been simply an accident, of course. Most astrogators were abysmally bad by the standards Adele had learned to expect in the RCN.

Her smile was real, though it didn’t reach her lips.
Let alone the standards set by the
Princess Cecile
’s officers
.

The ripples in sidereal space-time gave no indication of the size or course of the extracting vessel. That became clear in a shivering rush, the way a bag expands when tugged through the air with its mouth open.

The newcomer was the anti-pirate cruiser
Estremadura
.

Adele considered the options as quickly and coldly as a computer would have done. Having decided, she locked the gun turrets, said, “Vesey, this is an enemy if it recognizes us, but I hope it won’t. Break…”

She drew deep breath. Then—using laser, because it was hardest to intercept and she
really
hoped to keep Base Saal in ignorance of what was going on—she said, “Unknown vessel, this is RCS
Princess Cecile
, Captain Leary commanding, over.”

When the
Estremadura
was patrolling above Madison, it might have noticed the
Sissie
in harbor. At the time, though, the corvette was masquerading as the
House of Hrynko
, so past observation shouldn’t be a danger.

The problem was that although Commander Doerries was Adele’s enemy and was obviously playing some game at variance with the official policy of the Alliance, he was also thoroughly competent. Doerries might have connected the destruction of Platt’s outstation in Madison with the sudden departure of Principal Hrynko and her yacht from Madison. Adele would have noticed that, and she would then have tried to match the yacht to other known vessels.

Adele was quite certain that the
Princess Cecile
was in every Fleet database, even those of outlying regions like the Forty Stars Sector. The Kostroman rig was only camouflage until someone looked at it closely, and it seemed probable that Officer Adele Mundy was as well known to Fleet Intelligence as Captain Daniel Leary was.

The
Estremadura
did not reply to the hail. That could have various meanings, but the cruiser’s rig was coming down and it had lit its High Drive. Adele’s display indicated that the ships were 23,000 miles apart, but the cruiser was unquestionably accelerating toward the
Sissie
.

“Bloody hell!” Sun said. He wasn’t using the intercom, probably because he had forgotten about it. “Bloody hell, mistress, you’ve got to free my guns! She wants us so bad she’s had a topmast carry away from the thrust! Mistress, she’ll be launching missiles any moment, and if I don’t deflect them, we’ve screwed the pooch for sure! We can’t maneuver, we got Six out on a line!”

“
Ship
,” ordered Vesey on the general push, “
action stations. Missiles, prepare to attack the
Estremadura
but do not unshutter your tubes. Break
.”

There was very little chance that the missileers, Chazanoff and his mate Fiducia in the BDC, weren’t already plotting attacks on the
Estremadura
. They would have done the same if an RCN battleship had appeared instead of an Alliance auxiliary cruiser.

Good missileers, just like good gunners, liked to train with real-world targets instead of simulations which the attack console throws up. Vesey was just making explicit what they already must have assumed: the
Estremadura
was a real enemy.

Vesey was playing it safe by ordering them to leave the missile tubes shuttered also. It would require a careful observer with good optics to notice whether the
Sissie
’s tubes were closed—as they were to reduce turbulence during liftoffs and landings in an atmosphere—or opened for use; but the cruiser had been built on Pantellaria, where optics were a specialty, and the efficiency it had demonstrated in the Madison System gave no one reason to trust that its watch officers would be blind or inept.

“
Sun…
” Vesey continued. Adele would have eavesdropped on the message even if Vesey had used a two-way link, but in fact the captain was manually copying to her signals officer. “
If you argue against Officer Mundy’s decision again, I will not only derate you but also transfer you out of the
Sissie
’s crew. Do you understand, over?
”

“
Sir!
” the gunner said. “
Understood sir!
”

That was a little stiff
… Adele thought. But Vesey was letting Adele get on with her job, so it was only common courtesy to leave questions of crew discipline to the First Lieutenant, whose duty it was.

Vesey almost certainly knew that the
Estremadura
didn’t carry missiles: they would be a useless bulk and expense for a ship intended to engage pirates and blockade runners. Sun probably knew that also, though it was possible that he had forgotten in his desire to go into action.

Adele was certain that Vesey would have given the same order if a salvo of missiles had been driving straight at them, however. Six had told her to defer to Adele’s judgment, so Vesey would defer.

“Unknown vessel,” Adele repeated, “this is RCS
Princess Cecile
. Please identify yourself, over.”

She continued to speak calmly, but she carefully injected the least note of irritation into her tone. Any emotion in Adele’s voice was probably artificial, though very occasionally real anger came through.

Not when she was in a killing rage, however. Then she became icy cold.

The
Estremadura
still did not reply. Adele sighed and unlocked the gun turrets.

“Vesey,” she said, “I’m going to try once more, but I think we have to assume that the
Estremadura
intends to attack us. Break. Unknown vessel, identify yourself or we will treat you as hostile. RCS
Princess Cecile
over.”

The corvette shuddered as the main hatch started to close. The vibration was worse than usual because the ship was in freefall instead of having water or even solid earth to absorb the trembling.

“
Ship, they’re aboard!
” Cory shouted, using the general channel instead of the command push. The common spacers were just as concerned about Six as the ship’s officers were. “
I’ve jettisoned the line instead of reeling it in, out!
”

The plasma thrusters as well as the High Drive motors kicked in. Vesey was a careful officer who normally brought the High Drive on line gradually. That way she didn’t risk an explosion in the event a feed anomaly led to a buildup of either matter or antimatter in the mixing chamber before its opposite was injected; this time she must have slammed the valves wide open.

Even accelerating at the maximum rate—a little over 2 Gs—by using both propulsion systems, the loaded
Sissie
’s 1300 tons were slow to get moving. It was unusual to use plasma thrusters in hard vacuum, because they were much less efficient than the High Drive’s annihilation of matter and antimatter. Vesey was doing so to get the corvette under way as quickly as possible.

Which wasn’t going to make any significant difference in the rate with which the Alliance cruiser closed with them. The
Estremadura
had extracted at .004 C. It would have had difficulty braking to land on Sunbright, but its captain appeared to have come with the intention of fighting.

“
Ship, prepare to insert
,” Vesey said. The drives shut off as abruptly as they had been switched on. Adele’s styluses no longer weighed in her fingers, and her body rose against the console’s restraints.

Hatches squealed deep in the lower hull. The
Princess Cecile
shook herself in a fashion that Adele had never before experienced; she wondered if maximum thrust had damaged the ship.

The
Estremadura
had not begun firing, though it was sure to do so momentarily. At this range the bolts wouldn’t damage even the
Sissie
’s rigging, but the bath of ions would prevent her from escaping into the Matrix.

The real hammering would begin shortly thereafter, as the cruiser’s proper motion brought the two ships within knife range. Sun and Rocker were as good as any gunners in the RCN, but the
Estremadura
’s gunners had proven they were first rate in Sun’s estimation also. The Alliance cruiser had twice the armament and nearly three times the hull size over which to spread the damage.

A single thruster burped. The clang—it felt as if someone had kicked the hull with a steel-toed boot—was as unexpected as it was infuriating. Somebody—it was probably Woetjans—roared on the command channel, “
What the bloody hell are you playing at!
”

Even Adele knew enough to be horrified. The jolt of plasma would delay insertion by ten or more seconds, during which—

The image of the
Estremadura
blurred on Adele’s display, then tightened to a false sharpness as software enhanced the signal into what it believed was the correct form.
What’s happened to the sensors?

The cruiser opened fire, six guns rippling with minimal separations between the bolts. The charges did not reach the
Princess Cecile
, but the void between the ships flared.

“
Inserting!
” Vesey said.

For an instant, reality for Adele flattened. She felt infinitely thin, infinitely extended—

And the
Sissie
was fully in the Matrix. Adele’s display became a pearly blur inset with the miniature faces of her fellow officers. The console was displaying the input of the external sensors, but there was no longer reality in human terms beyond the corvette herself.

Daniel, groping for the catches of his rigging suit, clashed up the final steps of the companionway and entered the bridge. He had taken his helmet and gauntlets off already. Hogg, wearing an airsuit, followed at his heels.