Lt. Leary, Commanding (60 page)

Absolute location, though . . . that went beyond science, perhaps beyond art. It required that the astrogator—that Daniel—read the Matrix from topside and keep it in the back of his mind as he viewed the gauges on his display.

The weight of Casimir radiation affected the potential of the sails resisting it to thrust the
Princess Cecile
through the Matrix. There were ongoing efforts to develop software which could chart deviations from the calculated mean and adjust the sails to take maximum benefit from the actual conditions. All the programs to date had failed: they overcorrected, inducing a pyramid of errors into the system until the computer had to shut down for reprogramming.

A human being who'd seen the flow of universes beyond the sails and who felt each stress, each charge, of the ship he captained could hope to do what no electronic mind could encompass. It was no more than a hope, of course; but for the crew of a corvette preparing to attack a battleship, hope was an unusual boon.

"Battle Direction Center," Daniel ordered. "Bring forward your solutions."

"
Sir, I've not complet
—" Dorst began to say.

"Now,
spacer
!" Mon said before Daniel could offer his equivalent of the same thought. Knowing Mon, if Dorst was within reach at the time he started his excuse there'd been a slap as punctuation.

If that'd happened, Daniel hoped Dorst would have better sense than to resent it. The midshipman was big, young, and healthy, but Mon was too experienced a veteran to fight fair. He'd literally mop the deck with Dorst's face after kicking him in the balls a few times to induce the proper frame of mind.

There were things you learned in the Academy, and there were things you learned from the Mons and Woetjans and Hoggs of this world. You needed both to be a credit to the RCN.

Lt. Daniel Leary wore a smile as he viewed the solutions of Mon, Vesey, the computer, and Dorst's own partial. The last was a good start, but the boy had to learn that sometimes having the answer right was less important than having the answer
now
.

The computer's course would require fourteen hours in the Matrix and two intermediate returns to normal space to fix the corvette's location. No other procedure could achieve the required accuracy parameters.

Vesey had done something quite original, plotting back from the target. It wouldn't work in the real world because the small change in the
Princess Cecile
's course during the plotting couldn't be factored in; the whole solution had to be recalculated. Despite that, it was an intelligent attempt to deal with requirements that one of the most advanced computers in the human universe found beyond practical resolution.

Mon's solution was practical and practically suicidal: wham, bam! Thank you, Admiral Chastelaine. Following exit, the
Princess Cecile
would have to reenter the Matrix within thirty-one seconds to avoid plunging into Getica's upper atmosphere. Daniel wasn't sure so quick a transition was possible, and he
knew
it wasn't possible if they received battle damage during the run-in.

Which left Daniel's own solution, the one he'd probably have chosen even if he'd had Admiral bloody Anston as well as Commander Foulkes, the Academy's instructor in tactics, in the BDC sweating over their alternatives. Lt. Daniel Leary commanded
this
vessel.

Daniel chuckled as he entered the chosen course into the active file. The schematic of the corvette's sails changed; potentials fluttered, spiking before dropping to zero as the
Princess Cecile
slid dimensionally
sideways
into another universe. The set of the sails immediately began to change for the second of the three legs of the approach.

"Ship, this is the captain!" Daniel said. His voice sounded vaguely bored when he heard it over the PA system. "We will reenter normal space in three minutes thirty . . . five seconds. Prepare for action. All personnel don emergency suits."

He and Adele—she under protest—were still wearing their rigging suits. Sun had slipped on his emergency suit of thin fabric while Daniel was topside. Betts, looking at his display with anguish for the perfect solution he still couldn't find, stood. He jerked open the drawer in the chair seat and pulled out his.

Tovera had disappeared into the wardroom. There were emergency suits there, so she and Hogg—

Almighty God, what about Delos Vaughn?

"Wardroom!" Daniel said. The servants and their prisoner were probably the only ones present in the compartment, but Daniel needed to get the message to anyone who could possibly help. "Get President Vaughn into a suit soonest! Hogg, do you hear me? Cut him loose and suit him up!"

The
Princess Cecile
made another transition, this the one that brought her onto the long final approach. On Daniel's display the sail schematic changed again.

The topsail of Ventral 6 rotated to 238 degrees instead of the programmed 257 degrees; abruptly it leaped another five degrees, then warped around the remainder of the way in tiny jerks. Daniel thought of riggers ignoring the transition and hauling around by main force the frozen tackle.

The rig was aligned. Daniel checked the schematic again, then fed to the sails the charges that would cause them to react against the pressure of Casimir radiation. The
Princess Cecile
canted in space-time.

Daniel pressed a dedicated signal button on his console: ALL PERSONNEL WITHIN THE HULL. The six arms of every semaphore station on the hull now stuck out like the petals of a daisy, a clear sign to the riggers that they were to come in immediately. Those who couldn't see a station themselves would be warned by hand-signals from their fellows, but veterans like the
Princess Cecile
's crew knew without being told that the corvette was making her attack run.

"
Two minutes to reentry into normal space!
" Dorst announced in a firm, normal-sounding voice. Daniel would be able to praise the lad to his grandfather without hesitation. Both midshipmen were assets to the
Princess Cecile
's crew.

The riggers weren't coming in.

Daniel cleared the semaphore control, then hammered it with his fist. That was waste effort, he knew, but he had to do it anyway.

"Adele?" he said desperately. "Is there anything wrong with the topside signal apparatus?"

If there was, he could send a man out—could go himself, he was wearing a rigging suit—and bring the crew down with hand-signals.

Adele brought up a display, checked it, and quickly checked it against three columns of similar data—the recorded values from past occasions when the semaphores were known to be working properly. He'd known there wouldn't be anything wrong.

"
No, Daniel,
" she said without inflexion. "
The equipment's in order. Is there a problem?
"

"
One minute to reentry into normal space!
"

"Woetjans's keeping her crew topside," Daniel said. He felt a sudden despair, though he knew he'd have done the same thing if he'd been the
Sissie
's bosun. "She wants them ready to clear battle damage immediately so that we can maneuver as quickly as possible."

The survivors would be ready.

"
Thirty seconds to reentry!
" said Lt. Mon. "
God bless the RCN!
"

Transition
.

The first missile released with a
thump
so quick that Adele thought it was part of the buffeting of the corvette's return to sidereal space. The second, launched five seconds later so that it wouldn't be damaged by the exhaust trail of the first, corrected her misapprehension.

Not that Adele cared. She was in the sea of information which flooded from the ships of the Alliance squadron and Tanais Base. Admiral Chastelaine was organizing his force and simultaneously trying to learn what the Strymonian base personnel knew about the recently sighted warship.

Reading between the lines of the queries, Chastelaine didn't trust his new allies even though he'd left a force of Alliance personnel both on Tanais and in the orbital forts defending the base. She smiled grimly. The only certainty with traitors was that they'd stab you in the back also if they found it expedient.

"
God the mother of us all!
" somebody screamed over the PA system.

Adele flicked her left wand, a hair's breadth from cutting access to the idiot who'd misused the system for babble at a time of crisis. She saw for the first time the image echoed from Daniel's screen to the top of her display.

It was still a misuse of the PA system, but this time she'd let it pass. She stared transfixed at the image.

Der Grosser Karl
's mass hid all but an edge of Tanais because the corvette viewed her at such close vantage. Adele had seen the
Aristotle
from closer yet, but that had been in dry dock with the
Aristotle
's sails removed and her antennas folded against the hull. The bulk of
Der Grosser Karl
's seventy thousand deadweight tonnes was increased by fully extended eighty-meter antennas and enough hectares of electroconductive sails that a small city could hide beneath them.

"
Entering the Matrix in
—" Dorst was announcing.

Working forward along the battleship's hull, a topsail, a midsail, and last the mainsail of three successive antennas bulged against their original stress and tore. Sparks of antimatter exhaust danced through them, devouring more of the fabric. The missile had grazed
Der Grosser Karl
, but without seriously affecting the target's ability to sail and fight.

"—
thirty seconds
," Dorst said.

The maincourse of an antenna near the battleship's stern vanished in a rainbow fireball.
The second missile,
Adele thought, but then two more sails, amidships to port and starboard, ruptured. The battleship's plasma cannon were clearing their own fields of fire, blasting away rigging that had been in the way. The
Princess Cecile
jolted sideways in a bath of flame.

A deep, three-hundred-foot-long gouge opened along
Der Grosser Karl
's bow in a roostertail of coruscance. Red, yellow, and white sparks erupted into vacuum. Metal burned where sufficient air escaped to support combustion; otherwise it merely radiated away the frictional heat that had ripped it apart.

Alliance ships were signaling wildly. Adele noticed with a grim smile that two destroyers were sending in clear and that the heavy cruiser's messages were encrypted according to two separate systems—apparently depending on whether they originated on the bridge or in the Battle Direction Center. She was quite certain that the Alliance vessels were having more trouble understanding their own communications than she was.

"
Entering the Matrix in fourteen seconds!
" a voice said, Daniel's. Adele cut in an image of his face, set and a little redder than usual. The recalculation to adjust for loss of sail area to the battleship's plasma bolt must have been a strain both mental and—as Adele well knew—physical in the need for absolute precision in typing in the commands that alone could save the corvette.

"
Entering
—"

Der Grosser Karl
fired another rippling volley, but the missile's grazing impact and damage to several High Drive nozzles caused the great ship to slew. The bolts missed the
Princess Cecile
. An antenna in the battleship's sternmost ring exploded, the uppermost ten meters shooting off as a projectile driven on a shockwave of the portion vaporized by plasma.

Transition
.

People were shouting, perhaps everyone aboard the corvette except Adele herself. She sorted the data her equipment had gathered during the
Princess Cecile
's seconds within normal space.

Most were ordinary communications, the ash and trash of the Alliance squadron leaving port for the first time after a difficult voyage, but there was also the series of messages dealing with the briefly spotted unknown warship. Then, like shouts of "Fire!" in a crowded theater, came the disbelieving reactions to the corvette's reappearance in the middle of the squadron—

And nothing, because the
Princess Cecile
was again within the Matrix, safe from attack and probably beyond pursuit by those aboard the Alliance ships. They weren't Selma pirates.

Adele gave a snort of laughter. They weren't Daniel Leary, either.

The alarm that had been pulsing cut off. Lt. Mon said on a dedicated channel between the Battle Direction Center and the bridge, "
No hull penetration, I repeat, no penetration. Damage on Dorsal Three-Four-Five, the mainsails fucked and masts severed below the topsails. Minor damage on Starboard Two but the topsail is still eighty percent. Shall we start repairs immediately? Over.
"

"
Negative
," Daniel said as he typed, his strokes as hard and exact as a hammer driving nails. "
We'll make our second run with the present rig. Mon, I want you to go out on the hull and tell Woetjans this time she's to bring her crew in when I give the order. Break. Hogg?
"

"Standing at your side, master," Hogg said, not shouting but speaking loudly enough to be heard over the sounds of a ship at war. Missiles rumbled on their loading tracks, making the whole vessel vibrate. The remaining rounds in the magazine added their thunder as well, each rolling into the space vacated by the one ahead of it.

"Go with Mon, he won't let you drift away," Daniel said. His voice sounded like wind roaring through a long tube. "Go out with a pistol in your hand. Tell Woetjans that you'll shoot her if she disobeys my order. I won't ask that of Mon; but I will of you, Hogg, and Ellie knows that you'll obey."

"Yeah, all right," Hogg said. He turned to watch Mon coming up Corridor C, dressed in a rigging suit. "But I tell you, he better
not
let me float away."

Sun stared without expression at the servant's back as he went to join the lieutenant. He felt Adele's glance, nodded, and forced a smile to her. "She'll bring 'em in," he said. "She knows the captain means business."