Lt. Leary, Commanding (44 page)

The starship shuddered in a pattern that had by now become as familiar as Adele's nightmares and very nearly as unpleasant to experience. Colors inverted to their visual reciprocals. For an instant Adele saw not one compartment but an infinite series of compartments, each identical—almost—to the others.

She kept her eyes open. She'd tried closing them the first few times, and the result was even worse.

Another shudder. It was as disconcerting as the previous series even though Adele's conscious mind knew that when she was growing up
this
was the only universe she'd ever expected to know.

"
Hallelujah!
" a spacer shouted. Over the intercom, Lt. Mon bellowed,
"
By God! I don't think we're the ship's length out of our calculated exit. Three cheers for Captain Leary!
"

Adele heard the cheering with a distant part of her mind. The rest of her, body and soul, was busy with the glut of information the
Princess Cecile
's communications suite was gathering.

Signals Officer Mundy was at work.

"RCN corvette
Princess Cecile
requests landing clearance for Tanais Base," Daniel said, feeling expansive. "We'll need dockyard assistance in removing and refitting our fusion bottle, but the ship will be able to lift to another berth after initial touchdown if necessary.
Sissie
over."

Daniel was glad that Lt. Mon had told the crew about how precisely they'd exited the Matrix, because otherwise he might have said something himself. Daniel didn't like boastfulness, in himself or in others, but there were some things so uniquely wonderful that they shouldn't pass without comment.

"
Tanais control to RCN vessel
," an agitated voice said after more than the normal lag for communications over a 70,000 mile separation. "
We have no information regarding your arrival here. You are not approved for landing. I repeat, you are not approved for landing! You must land on Strymon and get authorization from the Fleet Office before you can land here. Tanais control over.
"

Daniel frowned, the expression of an RCN officer and Cinnabar nobleman who'd just been told what to do by wogs. He glanced at the course schematic which had replaced the astrogation display when the corvette entered sidereal space. The
Princess Cecile
retained considerable velocity from the bubble universe from which it had exited. The High Drive was braking at .5 gee, the hardest a reasonable captain would stress a vessel with its sails set.

Lt. Mon had laid out a complex powered orbit that would bring the
Princess Cecile
around Tanais alone instead of looping the primary. He'd calculated it to give them time to scrub off momentum during the expected bureaucratic delays an unannounced vessel could expect before being assigned a berth.

The present business was not at all to be expected.

"Tanais control, this is RCN, I repeat,
RCN
, vessel
Princess Cecile
," Daniel said. He was handling the communications chores himself, both because he was more familiar with procedures than Adele and because her specialized skills could be put to better use at this moment than routine. "Your response is not satisfactory. Be advised that I intend to dock my vessel at Tanais Base in accordance with Strymon's treaty obligations to the Republic of Cinnabar. Over!"

His hand reached for a red button set into the material of the console; not a holographic construct. Before he touched it, General Quarters chimed through the corvette: Lt. Mon in the Battle Direction Center had been a hair quicker than his captain.

"
RCN vessel, wait please,
" said the controller. He sounded as though he was on the verge of a coronary or a nervous breakdown. "
Please wait. Tanais out . . . ah, over.
"

The bridge whispered with the motions of officers focusing on their individual domains. In the corridor the riggers who'd come in during exit—it was possible to make the transition with crewmen on the hull, but physical and psychological disorientation made it very dangerous for them—were locking their helmets shut in obedience to Woetjans' order over the intercom.

Daniel switched the left half of his display to a real-time image of Tanais. The corvette's course had already brought her within the forts' interlocking orbits. The whine of the High Drive gained in volume as it maintained balance between the conflicting pulls of Getica and of the smaller but closer satellite. Tanais Base was a scrawl within the ice sheet, visible from diffracted light. Thermal imaging would make the tunnels even more evident.

"
RCS
Princess Cecile
, this is Tanais Control,
" said a new voice: male, forceful, and very determined. "
Return to the challenge point immediately and stay there until you have authorization to close.
You are in a restricted area at a time of national emergency. Return to the challenge point or we will fire! Tanais over!
"

Good God, there was a heavy battle squadron down there! Not in the base proper but on the ice on the side of Tanais which eternally faced Getica.

"Tanais Base, we're withdrawing immediately!" Daniel said as his fingers typed preset emergency codes. The first of them returned control to the command console from the Battle Direction Center. Lt. Mon might be able to handle this as ably as Daniel could, but it was God's truth that they couldn't both be responsible at the same time.

If Daniel had had time, he'd have prayed that he didn't miskey . . . but if he'd had time, he'd have been able to check his work. "I repeat, RCS
Princess Cecile
is withdrawing immedia—"

"
Daniel
," said Adele's voice over the intercom. She didn't sound nervous but her tone was as joyless as a slaughterhouse. "
Base Command has just ordered the forts to open fire on us.
"

With the command console locked down the way it was, no one should have been able to break in. No one but Adele could have.

"Shit!" Daniel shouted. That probably startled Tanais Control, but a lot of people were getting surprises today. Daniel's left hand chopped the High Drive while his right engaged the sequence that would return the
Princess Cecile
to the Matrix.

"Ship!" Daniel said. "Spacers, we're under attack by Tanais Base. I'm inserting us into—"

The forts each mounted eight-inch plasma cannon in turrets on the north and south axes. The
Princess Cecile
's course had carried her planetward between two of the forts. Their guns fired as pairs within microseconds of one another. The bolts—dense, thigh-thick gouts of charged particles—tore through vacuum a hundred yards behind the corvette. They made their own light, like sections ripped from a star's corona.

"—the Matrix where—"

Daniel could feel the
Princess Cecile
start to shift out of sidereal space. The hair on his neck tingled and a trembling in his gut mimicked the onset of panic.

"—we'll be able—"

The forts missed because Daniel had shut off braking thrust as he prepared to reenter the Matrix. The gunnery computers calculated lead based on the rate of change in the corvette's progress—and therefore fired short. The delay between discharges for heavy cannon was fifteen to twenty seconds; otherwise heat buildup in the chamber would cause a catastrophic failure when lasers compressed and detonated the second tritium pellet. The
Princess Cecile
was safe from the guns that had already engaged her.

The third fort came around the curve of the satellite on a combination of the corvette's momentum and the fort's own orbital velocity. The
Princess Cecile
's vector above the surface of Tanais carried her directly toward the fort, giving the guns a zero-deflection shot.

Sun couldn't fire his own pairs of four-inch cannon because of the
Princess Cecile
's sails. When set they draped the hull like shrouds and would absorb the vessel's own discharges in fiery cataclysms.

"For what we are about to receive . . ." the gunner said, shouting because words were the only response he could make to a situation he appreciated even more clearly than his captain. "The Lord make us thankful!"

Two eight-inch plasma bolts ripped through the portion of the
Princess Cecile
which hadn't yet trembled out of sidereal space. Their scouring impact flared across Daniel's display.

_"W
ell, things could be a great deal worse," said Daniel in a
pleased tone, leaning back in his console.

The words and tone were perfectly predictable, Adele thought as she looked across the crowded bridge at the captain. Daniel would say the same thing—and mean it—if he'd just had both legs amputated. If Daniel Leary had a motto, it would be
While there's life, there's hope
.

On duty, at any rate. Off duty his motto would probably involve the age of suitability for girls.

Adele smiled faintly. Her own motto would be more along the lines of
While Daniel's alive, there's hope
. The
Princess Cecile
's crew was a normal assemblage of human beings, some more sanguine than others; but not a soul of them would disagree with Adele there.

Woetjans and Pasternak stood in the center of the bridge. Even without Betts and Sun at their consoles—they were on the hull, checking the launcher hatches and gun turrets respectively for external damage—the chiefs of rig and ship filled the compartment. Condensate dripping from metal fittings of their rigging suits shrouded them in a clammy reminder of the environment from which they'd just returned.

"It's bloody well bad enough!" Woetjans said. "The sails, all right, we can patch and pair so that with the spares we've got pretty much a full set. They'll be the devil to furl where we've double-hung a yard to get full coverage out of rags, but we'll cope. The masts, though, the masts are fucked good."

"The hull's as solid as the day she came from the builders, though," said Pasternak. "The bolts pretty much dissipated on the sails—"

He glanced at the lowering Woetjans.

"—which is hard lines for the bosun here. I'm not saying I'm happy about what happened to her sails, but we're all better for not having taken an eight-inch bolt square on the hull, right?"

Woetjans grimaced, but she nodded agreement.

The corvette was full of noise. She was double hulled, and the cavities held spare rigging along with other stores which cold and vacuum wouldn't affect. The sound of hollow steel spars being withdrawn through the outside hatches rang within the hull like a tocsin.

Adele's screen quivered with pairs of conversations, sometimes a dozen at the same time, as spacers assessed the damage and started repairs. The
Princess Cecile
hung in normal space. Sun and Gansevoort had inserted intercoms from the internal helmets into prepared sockets in the riggers' suits, though Adele as Signals Officer had to activate each unit before it could be used.

A low-power radio signal on the hull of a starship in the Matrix would distort navigation by many light-years and in theory could rip antennas out of their steps. The
Princess Cecile
wouldn't be returning to the Matrix any time soon, however, so Daniel had approved his chiefs' request for quicker communications on the hull.

Lt. Mon entered the bridge, slipping between Woetjans and Pasternak without touching either of them. "All the spars are out of storage or will be," he announced. "Unless the bosun salvaged some pieces I don't know about, though, we're short six masts
and
four more of 'em are going to hang shorter yards than the standard."

He glared at Woetjans. Mon always looked angry, on the verge of a snarling explosion. From what Adele had seen of the man, his normal expression accurately described the personality beneath.

Despite that—because of it?—Mon's bubbling anger in a crisis was just as bracing as Daniel's cheerful insouciance. No one seeing either man could imagine they thought there was anything to be afraid of in the present situation.

"Naw, we're screwed," Woetjans agreed. "It was just bad luck that so many masts were burned through or near through, but because it happened when we were entering the Matrix . . ."

She shrugged. "The pieces're scattered through three, maybe four bubbles. We'd do better to carve new poles from asteroids than we would to go searching for the ones we lost."

"If we hadn't been entering the Matrix, there wouldn't 've been enough left of the
Sissie
to make you sneeze," Mon snapped. "The captain saved our
butts
by shunting us out so fast."

He rotated his glance around the room in search of anyone to deny his statement. Adele met the look with a cool frown; Mon's attitude affronted her, foolish though she understood her reaction to be.

"I think we can count ourselves lucky," Daniel said with a reminiscent smile. "I don't believe many corvettes have survived a pair of eight-inch bolts from such short range."

"We're safe enough," Woetjans said, "but it'll take us a month to limp back to Sexburga with the rig we've got left. Unless—"

Her voice changed, growing noticeably brighter.

"—you're planning to punch us straight back to Strymon, sir?"

"No, I'm not planning to do that," Daniel said without losing his smile. "But I assure you, Woetjans, the next time I need volunteers for a suicide mission I'll keep you in mind."

He looked at his officers, his face quite different from that of the man with whom Adele shared a two-room suite and who chatted about natural history and girls. His hand touched a key. In the air between him and the standing officers—Mon and Woetjans stepped back—appeared a holographic image of six starships against the icy surface of Tanais.

"The battleship is
Der Grosser Karl
," Daniel said. "She must be on her shakedown cruise."

"The bloody
Winckelmann
hasn't been in first-line service for twenty years," Mon muttered, "and the
Winckelmann
's no bloody battleship."

"Yes, that's so," Daniel said. His tone was neutral, but Mon heard the reproach in it and colored. His lips formed a silent apology.