Lt. Leary, Commanding (56 page)

"
Five minutes to exit from the Matrix!
" Dorst's voice noted. The midshipman was speaking louder than necessary, a sign of his tension.

"
Mon out, sir
," Mon said, returning to his immediate duties.

Daniel wasn't a dreamer, not really, but he had his reveries. For a moment he let his mind wander to the inevitable RCN punitive expedition that would retake Strymon and put paid to the Alliance interlopers. Would the
Princess Cecile
be a part of it? And would, for that matter, Lt. Daniel Leary still be in command of the
Princess Cecile
?

Daniel chuckled, calling up the sail plan, power output, consumption, and all the scores of other displays that were the same as they'd been before he and Mon discussed the attack. With near certainty they'd remain the same until the
Princess Cecile
returned to sidereal space. Daniel was still better off looking them over once more than he'd be building castles in the fairyland of the future.

Adele had rotated her seat away from the opalescence of her empty screen and was looking across the bridge. She nodded minusculy when Daniel caught her eye; but she hadn't been, he realized, looking at him or at anything else within the starship's limited confines.

Adele was uncomfortable in the Matrix. From the little she'd said, she disliked transitions even more than most of the humans who had to undergo them. She didn't have work to occupy her so she was sending her mind into another place entirely.

Daniel stood and walked over to his friend. He didn't have any duties for the moment either, so using his time to raise the morale of a valuable member of his crew was clearly called for.

"I hope Commodore Pettin can get his whole squadron into orbit within an hour of our warning," Daniel said conversationally. "I'd expect him to lift the
Winckelmann
immediately on her anchor watch and ferry the remainder of the crew up aboard the destroyers, but it's possible that he'll do it the other way around. In any case, we shouldn't be alone above Strymon for very long."

"
Two minutes to exit from the Matrix
," the PA system announced, this time in Mon's voice. The atmosphere of the ship didn't change, but someone on B Level began singing, " `
I walk in the garden alone
. . .' " in a wheezy bass.

Adele focused on Daniel. Her face would never look soft, but some of the edge of tension over her cheekbones eased. "Will we be fighting other ships?" she asked; a polite question rather than a matter of personal concern.

"The guardships ought to run instead of fighting," Daniel said. "If they do fight, Kelburney's fleet will sweep them away without needing our help. There's no guarantees, of course, but I don't anticipate that sort of trouble."

He grinned. "Which is not to say that Betts and I haven't prepared firing solutions for up to twelve targets, just in case Pleyna Vaughn increased the number of picket vessels. We don't know what's been happening on Strymon."

Adele smiled the way a cat does before biting. "I hope that we
will
know after we've been in orbit for a few minutes," she said. "I'll be—we'll be, that is—entering the databases of the Ministry of the Navy and the Presidential Palace both. I've programmed the computer to sort for recent information bearing on the
Princess Cecile
in particular and the RCN more generally. I'll be reviewing the data as it comes in. That should give us an idea of the government's intentions very quickly."

"
One minute to exit from the Matrix,
" Mon announced.

Daniel felt a surge of anticipation. There was nothing in the world like it. The moment that a girl drops her pretense of modesty and coos, "Well, maybe
one
kiss," wasn't in the same league.

"Showtime," Daniel said with a grin. He squeezed Adele's shoulder and strode back to his console with the economy of a captain who knows every inch and ounce of his ship.

Betts continued obsessively running missile solutions, but Sun turned from the gunnery display and gave Daniel a thumbs-up. Adele had her personal data unit where the console's virtual keyboard would normally be projected. She raised her wands; a ripple ran across the pastel blankness of the display.

"
Entering normal—
"

Images flipped in Daniel's mind. He saw himself from four angles; a trail of future selves stretched to infinity from each possible existence.

"—
space
," Mon closing in a gasp rather than the intended shout, as though he'd been punched in the stomach while the word was still in his throat.

Strymon, a blue ball with more land than water, hung 13,000 miles below the
Princess Cecile
. Three frigates were in geosynchronous orbits at 24,000 miles; the calculated position of the fourth put it on the other side of the planet from the corvette.

Daniel shrank the real-time view of Strymon to a sidebar and expanded the Plot Position Indicator from the right half to his whole display. He'd set the PPI's field for 300,000 miles above the planetary center. That was an unusually large volume for the purpose, but it allowed him to view the pirate cutters as they entered sidereal space.

"Strymonian vessels!" Daniel ordered, using modulated laser beams directed at the three visible ships. "Surrender at once to the forces of the Republic of Cinnabar. If you attempt resistance, the sixty-eight ships of my fleet will respond with overwhelming force!"

The
Princess Cecile
had exited directly above the capital, Palia, and the harbor serving it. Lt. Mon had the job of contacting the ships of Commodore Pettin's squadron on high-power microwave while Daniel warned off the guardships. Under the circumstances, Daniel didn't think the commodore would object to being left to an underling, though you could never be sure.

The PPI glowed, the pattern shifting like tinsel drifting in still air. Several, then a score, of the pirate cutters had vanished into the Matrix only moments from their first appearance in sidereal space. Now they reappeared, less than half their previous distance from Strymon.

"Strymonian frigates!" Daniel said. The fourth vessel had edged up from the planet's shadow; the
Princess Cecile
's commo suite directed a laser emitter at the Strymonian without further input from Daniel or Adele. "We have no quarrel with the loyal citizens of Strymon, but the traitors who've intrigued with the so-called Alliance of the tyrant Porra will be rooted out and punished if they don't give up immediately. Surrender to the Republic of Cinnabar to save your lives and your honor!!"

Precisely how surrender was an honorable option for the picket vessels was a question beyond Daniel's ability to answer, but it seemed a useful phrase to throw in at the moment. His father would've nodded with understanding.

The High Drive whined at maximum output to hold the
Princess Cecile
in position above Palia. Because the corvette was well below geosynchrony, that meant braking against its initial orbital velocity. Pray heaven that Mon had a clear link to the squadron!

Only a handful of the pirate cutters remained where they'd originally appeared, well out from Strymon. A gaggle of thirty trembled from the Matrix within 40,000 miles of the planet. Though there was nothing seemingly organized about the pirate formation, Daniel noted with delight and amazement that the ships were in precisely the same relative alignment as they had been before they entered the Matrix a few minutes before.

Woetjans and both rigging watches were on the hull, despite the danger and the fact they had no job to do at the moment. Daniel wasn't going to land so there was no need to take the antennas down, but he didn't know—couldn't know—what the corvette's next course might be. The riggers waited in case an emergency required an immediate adjustment to the sails.

Not, after all, an unlikely occurrence under the present circumstances.

"Strymonian vessels!" Daniel repeated. "Surrender to the RCN or die!"

He'd inset real-time imagery of the frigates across the bottom of his display. The Strymonians orbited with eight antennas partially extended, permitting them to shift into the Matrix on short notice but also able to maneuver in normal space. For the most part they expected to deal with smugglers or merchantmen lifting without paying their port duties, not actual warfare above their homeworld.

Several Selma cutters came out of the Matrix within Strymon's gravity well. None were particularly close to the guardships, though their varying altitudes and orbits meant that the parties could have volleyed rockets at one another if they'd chosen to do so.

Another score of pirates appeared in near space. Daniel shrank the scale of his PPI to a normal hundred thousand miles; if he'd halved the radius again, he'd still contain the entire Selma fleet.

Most of Kelburney's captains could have exited within pistol range of the frigates if they'd chosen to do so. The Strymonians would have fired rockets out of reflex before there was time to parley; and then would have died in salvos from the remaining scores of pirate cutters.

Few captains, no matter how brave, would throw their lives and ships away uselessly against overwhelming force—and those few would be restrained or shot by their own crews if they attempted such general suicide. By showing the Strymonians that resistance was pointless, Daniel was letting them save their lives.

Kelburney had accepted the plan with laughing agreement. Daniel didn't doubt that the pirates would slug it out at knife distance if forced to, but theirs was a business rather than a crusade. Death meant the end of the party and was therefore to be avoided.

"
RCN vessel, this is Frigate One-Two-Seven,
" said a high-pitched female voice which came to Daniel on a direct link. "
We have declared for President Delos Vaughn.
Welcome, allies! I repeat, we are allies of the RCN in suppressing the tyranny of the pretender Pleyna Vaughn. What are your requests? One-Two-Seven over.
"

President Delos Vaughn? Good God, what had been happening on Strymon during the past few days?

Two of the four frigates vanished, their icons from the PPI and the real-time images from the sidebar as well. They'd shaken out sails on their partial rigs and were escaping into the Matrix rather than trust the mercy of the swarming pirate fleet.

Daniel had expected and intended all four of the pickets to flee during the opportunity he'd given them. 127's—surrender? claim of alliance?—was a pleasant surprise, leaving only the fourth—

"
RCN vessel, this is Two-Oh-Four!
" a male voice buzzed through a poorly modulated laser link. "
Long live President Delos Vaughn! Long live the Cinnabar Navy!
"

Daniel cued his console to respond to both of the surrendering patrol vessels and also to the Astrogator's flagship. The
Princess Cecile
wasn't equipped to contact all sixty-seven ships of the pirate armada in a single transmission; he could only hope that Kelburney was.

"Strymonian vessels One-Two-Seven and Two-Oh-Four," Daniel said. "This is RCS
Princess Cecile
, Admiral Leary commanding. Make all your weapons safe, withdraw your gun turrets into your hulls, and hold your orbits. You will not be harmed if you obey these orders to the letter. RCN out."

There was always a risk that some pirate would settle an old grudge by rocketing sitting ducks like the Strymonian frigates, but that wasn't Daniel's major concern at the moment. What happened, happened.

The PPI was alive with cutters circling Strymon, in as many orbits as there were ships. The patterns had the chaotic complexity of a kaleidoscope, seemingly random motion which was nonetheless as precise as a sword dance. Serving alongside the pirates provided memories any captain would cherish. And other memories as well, of course.

Kelburney's own vessel was in the same orbit as the
Princess Cecile
, braking hard to hold position ten miles astern. Like the rest of the Selma cutters, it stepped a full set of antennas despite the stresses of maneuvering in normal space. The pirates favored shorter, thicker masts than the starships of more traditional states; even so, the Astrogator must be risking his rig in his desire to be able to race off through the Matrix without delay.

"
Sir, Commodore Pettin requests to speak with you,
" Lt. Mon said. "
Do you wish me to take the conn? Mon over.
"

As the
Princess Cecile
struggled to hold position over Palia, it was dropping toward the surface of Strymon. Eventually Daniel was going to have to gain altitude or enter the atmosphere—and he certainly wasn't going to enter the atmosphere. Still, he didn't have to make that decision quite yet.

"Right, hold position as long as you can, Mon," Daniel said. "And Mon? Warn me if our allies do something I need to know about, even if that means breaking in on the commodore. Out."

Adele's body was rigid. Her hands danced like a pair of balletomimes, and her display was a mass of data. It meant no more to Daniel than his astrogation vectors would have meant to her, but so long as Adele was at the signals console he knew he'd have all the warning there could be from that source.

He switched to the squadron command frequency that Mon had used to alert the ships on the ground. "Sir!" he said. "Lieutenant Leary reporting, over!"

Pettin wouldn't have heard Daniel claim to be an admiral to overawe the guardships. With luck—and a Signals Officer who was preternaturally adept at wiping records—he never would learn about that.

"
Leary, what the hell is going on, over?
" Pettin said, his voice beginning to break up in the higher registers.

"Sir, you've got to—" wrong word, junior lieutenants don't tell commodores what they've got to do "—get your personnel aboard and lift ship soonest!" Daniel said. "I'll explain as soon as—"

The command link was dual frequency, with the emitting and receiving antennas at bow and stern respectively. The separation wasn't enough on a vessel as small as a corvette to send and receive simultaneously through an atmosphere without interference, but it did allow Pettin to manifest his fury in a roar of static that silenced Daniel.