With the Lightnings (47 page)

Daniel rotated the corvette and increased thrust, climbing up from Kostroma's gravity well. They'd head out of the system for as long as they could. He felt his cheeks sag under acceleration. A fifteen percent chance of success had really been pretty good, given the odds he and his crew were facing.

They had no chance at all now.

Adele ran the system architecture a third time, searching for the lockout that protected the
Bremse
from its own mines. She was sure that the safety device was a separate chip, not software within the main command and control unit.

She was sure of that, but she couldn't find any place within the design for the chip to reside. And the lockout
wasn't
in the software either!

The living guards were bound with wire and floating in the middle of the concourse. One had bandages on his arm and forehead; the other's broken limb was taped to his chest. The technicians from Willoughby were unharmed but as silent as the two drifting corpses.

The four Cinnabar sailors clustered around a programming alcove which they'd set to display the planetary environs. Adele glanced toward them out of frustration. She was doing something wrong. She hadn't been sure she could remove the lockout, but she hadn't expected any difficulty in locating it.

Woetjans looked grim in stark contrast to her ready cheerfulness as the cutter approached the control node.
All
the sailors looked grim.

"Mistress?" the petty officer said as she caught Adele's eye. "Is there anything we can do to help Mr. Leary? They're going for the high jump if we don't."

"If you can find the
damned
lockout chip that prevents the mines from engaging the ship that laid them, then we can do something," Adele said in a voice so savage that she wouldn't have recognized it herself.

"Mistress?" said the eldest of the programmers. "That's part of the sensor receiver, not the control system. It's in the third chassis slot and has a blue band across it."

"Where?" said Woetjans.

Another programmer turned to the console beside him. "This one!" he said.

The cover panel had quick-release fittings. The programmer was fumbling with them when Lamsoe, Barnes and Dasi arrived together. The sailors brushed him out of the way with as little concern as Woetjans showed for the floating corpse with which she collided on her way to the unit.

Lamsoe stuck his prybar beneath the edge of the cover. He twisted. The plate lifted enough for Barnes and Dasi to reach under it. The plate flew up, accompanied by fragments of broken fasteners.

Adele checked her own work. If the lockout was eliminated, she shouldn't have to do anything more. But because she was who she was, Adele entered the main database for a schematic of the sensor control system.

Woetjans reached over the shoulders of her subordinates. Her hand came up with a component from which the locking screws dangled, along with bits of chassis.

A relay clicked somewhere within Adele's console. Two icons vanished—one minusculely before the second—on the display the sailors had been watching.

Adele wouldn't have been sure what had happened if Woetjans and the others hadn't begun to cheer.

Daniel's first thought was that a fault in the system caused the change in the Plot Position Indicator. It was too good to be true.

He still switched to a direct imagery of the cruiser/minelayer and scrolled back five seconds before the event. There wasn't a great deal he could do that was
more
useful, after all.

The
Bremse
was a blunt-nosed cylinder of eighteen thousand tons or so loaded. Her present attitude toward the
Princess Cecile
was three-quarters on, so foreshortening made her look tubby. Had he wished Daniel could have rotated the image on his display to show the Alliance vessel's full 780-foot length, but he didn't need a schematic.

At the five-second mark the cruiser/minelayer expanded on a line intersecting the vessel's long axis. A sleet of atomic nuclei had just ripped through her at light speed.

Plasma weapons weren't effective against starships because the bolts lost definition in the vastness of astronomical distance. A charge that could be safely generated on one vessel was unlikely to harm a similar ship across tens of thousands of miles.

A mine was under no such restriction as to the size of the charge. Its external structure only had to survive the first microsecond of the thermonuclear explosion in its heart so that its magnetic lens could direct the force of the blast toward the target.

In practice, lens efficiency was on the order of sixty percent. Sixty percent of a thee-kiloton explosion, even attenuated somewhat by distance, was enough to gut a dreadnought.

It opened the
Bremse
like a bullet through a melon. The forty or so mines still undeployed in the cruiser/minelayer's hold went off in a series of low-order explosions that turned the wreck into a gas cloud, but that was an unnecessary refinement.

Daniel cut thrust to one gravity, then hit the alert button. "All hands!" he said. "All hands! The
Bremse
has blown up! I repeat, the cruiser chasing us is gone!"

He thought for a moment about the five hundred human lives lost with the starship. There was no triumph in the thought, but there was no pity either. They'd died in the service of their state as Daniel Leary expected someday to die in the service of Cinnabar. So be it.

Dorfman had stood to hug the rating who held the sealant cannister. Baylor's console was live again, but the missileer gaped instead at Daniel's display. By now the image was only a haze that would soon be indistinguishable from any other volume of cislunar space. Voices elsewhere cheered, but some shouted doubtful questions. Not everybody aboard the
Princess Cecile
could believe they were alive and likely to remain that way for the immediate future.

Come to think, if there was a heaven it would be a lot like this. At least for Daniel Leary . . .

Daniel switched back to the PPI. For what seemed forever he'd been focused on the relative location of three points: Kostroma, the
Princess Cecile
, and the
Bremse
pursuing her. The intricate dance had ended and Daniel's mind was suddenly as clean as that of a baby starting a new life. Now he had to bring the corvette into orbit, ideally in close alignment with the command node so that the personnel who'd saved his life could return to the
Princess Cecile
.

Domenico entered the bridge. He looked wary and exceptionally calm. He threw Daniel a salute that proved not all combat sailors were slack about ceremony and said, "Chief of Rig reporting for orders, sir!"

It was his way of asking, very professionally, if the emergency was over.

"Yes, it's real, Domenico," Daniel said. "Mind, let's not have a bulkhead blow out now that we think we're safe. We'll pick up Ms. Mundy's detachment, then see what shape the ship's in and—"

Domenico's face went stiff. "Sir, check your display!" he said.

Daniel turned. There were three new dots just within the present fifteen-light-second boundary of the PPI. As he watched, two more dots appeared. They were starships dropping out of sponge space and proceeding the remainder of the way toward Kostroma at maximum braking effort.

Daniel touched the attention signal and called, "General quarters!"

Four more dots joined the five recently added to the display. The nine ships couldn't be said to be in tight formation, but for vessels which had just left sponge space they were in remarkably good order. The admiral in charge must be pleased with her subordinates.

Because there was no question at all that this was a naval squadron, not some sort of merchant argosy returning to Kostroma.

The repair crews were back at work; apart from them, there was a hush over the
Princess Cecile
. Domenico leaned over Daniel's shoulder to peer more closely at the display. "Does that read Tee-Ay-En One-Four-One-Eight?" he asked.

The
Princess Cecile
's PPI would assign an all-numerical designator to an icon if the object didn't provide one. Starships normally broadcast an alpha-numerical identification signal, however, the pennant number for naval vessels and a similar designator for merchantmen.

Daniel nodded. "Yes," he said. TAN1418 didn't mean anything to him.

"That's the
Rene Descartes
!" the bosun cried. "By Vishnu's dong, sir, I served on the old bitch for three years, I did! She was guardship over Harbor Three when we left Cinnabar, I swear to God!"

Daniel started to say, "Are you sure?" but caught the words just before they made him sound like a fool. He didn't know what else to say. Except—

He chimed for attention and announced, "All hands. I believe the vessels inbound are an RCN squadron, which will be very welcome. Continue repair work until further notice, but don't forget where your action stations are."

Daniel almost rang off, but a further thought struck him. "And fellow citizens?" he said. "Thank you. Your performance has been to the highest standards of the Republic of Cinnabar Navy."

There were cheers all over the ship. Daniel was choking. He knew he'd be replaced on the
Princess Cecile
as soon as the regular navy arrived, and he might never command another ship. But no captain,
ever
, would have a better crew than he did!

The icons on the PPI continued to reform as the newcomers approached Kostroma. The last four were probably transports: they remained two light-seconds behind the leaders. The five warships were arrayed flower-fashion with the battleship in the center.

They'd noticed the
Princess Cecile
as well. Because Dorfman still had a gunnery display on his console, the interrogatory was routed to Daniel: "RCS Vessel
Rene Descartes
, Captain Lairden commanding, carrying the flag of Rear Admiral Ingreit. Vessel signaling Are-Em Six-Nine-Three, please identify yourself. Over."

It took Daniel an instant to realize that he was RM693. He'd never had occasion to check the
Princess Cecile
's pennant number.

He took a deep breath, then hit the general communicator switch as well as the intership hailing channel. What he was about to do was worthless braggadocio that was bound to irritate the senior officers on the other end of the line.

But he was going to do it anyway. He was a Leary of Bantry; and the crew, still for the moment
his
crew, would appreciate it.

"This is RCS
Princess Cecile
," he said, "Lieutenant Daniel Leary commanding. You are authorized to orbit within our automatic defense array."

He cleared his throat and went on, "Allow me to say that your squadron is a welcome addition to the RCN forces on station here. You'll be very useful in helping mop up the remaining unpleasantness on the ground.
Princess Cecile
out."

There was as much laughter as cheering in the corvette's compartments this time. "By Vishnu!" the bosun said in delight. "By Vishnu, sir!"

Daniel smiled faintly. He could imagine what Admiral Ingreit would say when he heard the message. On the other hand, he could imagine what Speaker Corder Leary might have said in similar circumstances. In that, at least, father and son were more alike than different.

Daniel switched to the channel dedicated to communication between the
Princess Cecile
and Adele's detachment. He'd better inform the command node promptly, or Admiral Ingreit was going to find his squadron in range of a hostile and demonstrably lethal defensive constellation.

Twenty people sat at consoles around the walls of the outer room. Adele would have called them clerks if this had been a civilian setting. She didn't know what they were on a battleship.

"Come in, please," said the man seated at the desk of the small inner office. "And close the hatch behind you if you would."

Adele obeyed. She didn't like the feeling in the pit of her stomach, and she didn't think the problem was her return to gravity after six days weightless in the command node. Strictly speaking the
Rene Descartes
was under one-gee acceleration, not real gravity, but the only difference Adele could tell was that the battleship had changed course twice in the hours since she'd come aboard.

"We've completed integrating the defense array your ships brought with the Alliance mines already in place," she said. "I'd like to return to the ground, now. I was told to see you about transportation."

The man seated on the other side of the desk was tall, very fit, and about thirty years old. He wore an officer's uniform, but there were no rank insignia on his collar or sleeves.

The man chuckled. "Yes," he said, "we'll talk about transportation in a moment." He stood and reached across the desk to offer his hand. "My name's Elphinstone. Please sit down, Ms. Mundy."

The walls of the office had large flat-plate displays that gave the impression of windows, though the scenes were different. A starscape spread behind the desk as if the room were open to vacuum. Adele found the effect disconcerting, which was very likely Elphinstone's intention.

His handshake was firm; a little too firm. Elphinstone was playing a variation of the childish game of trying to crush the other party's hand with his own. He was demonstrating how much stronger he was than the small woman, and by implication how completely the situation was under his control.

Adele imagined Elphinstone's eyes bulging to either side of the bullethole. She shook her head in violent self-disgust. The sailors had tried, but it was impossible to clean the control node well enough to get rid of the smell of rotting blood.

Elphinstone wasn't smiling now. He coughed, then gestured to the single chair in front of the desk and repeated, "Please sit down, mistress."

His composure returned as he settled into his own more comfortable chair. "It's quite an honor to meet you," he said. "You're the reason for our easy victory here on Kostroma, you know."

Adele looked at the wall showing Kostroma City from an apparent thousand feet in the air. Most of the fires were out by now. The Alliance forces on the ground had been willing to surrender when they realized they were trapped beneath a hostile fleet and automatic defensive array.