The Road of Danger-ARC (44 page)

Fiducia was listening to the conversation as best he could, Rocker might be, and Blumelein was wholly lost in her display. Daniel didn’t mind others listening to this conversation if they wanted to, but he was treating it as a discussion with a fellow officer whose opinion he could pretend to value. He
did
value Cazelet, of course, but at present all he wanted from his subordinate was a way to rigorously check his own speculations.

“Sir?” Cazelet said. “How are they able to track us in the Matrix? I mean, the Palmyrenes did, but they were conning their cutters from out on the hull.”

“Well, partly…” Daniel said, “they’ve got somebody good piloting them from the hull, yes. Somebody better than me, certainly. I don’t know whether they’ve got anything as sophisticated as the mechanical hull controls that the Palmyrenes used, but there’s something. And it looks like her owners hired the pick of the specialists they wanted when the Fleet put ships in ordinary when the Treaty of Amiens was signed.”

As Daniel spoke, he brought up his course calculations. The
Sissie
was proceeding on Vesey’s track, not his own, but he doubted there was a whit of difference between them.

Which was the problem. The route from Sunbright to Hester 27514CH was straightforward and short—only about three days if the
Princess Cecile
had been able to accelerate in normal fashion. Woetjans would have arrived at virtually the same solution by pushing buttons on the astrogation computer.

“They know where we’re going,” Daniel mused aloud. “I was able to shake them when the
Savoy
lifted from Madison because they didn’t expect me to strike straight for Sunbright. Once they’d realized that I hadn’t set a course for Cremona, it was too late for them to pick up our track.”

He gestured to the display. Cazelet couldn’t see the data, but Daniel wasn’t really speaking to the midshipman.

“Now, we have nowhere to go except to the water point or back to Sunbright. If we return to Sunbright, the
Estremadura
won’t catch us but the Funnel Squadron certainly will. I don’t know precisely how Governor Blaskett will respond, but I don’t expect it will be a pleasant meeting after we’ve committed piracy. And there’s Grant on board, of course.”

“If we can’t run, sir,” said Cazelet, frowning, “what other choice do we have?”

Daniel shouted a laugh and slapped the fascia plate of the console with both open hands. “Yes!” he said. “Of
course
, Cazelet, thank you!”

Daniel switched his display to an attack screen. He began entering calculations.

“Sir?” Cazelet said diffidently. “I don’t follow you.”

“We’re RCN,” said Daniel in a tone of pleased wonder. “We can attack. We can
always
attack.”

***

“
Well, Sissies
,” Daniel said. “
I believe we’ve run long enough. It’s time to change the game
.”

To Adele, his voice sounded calm but forceful. That was a fairly accurate description of Daniel under most circumstances.

“
The Alliance cruiser which is pursuing us
,” he continued, “
is being conned very ably from her hull. Whenever we extract from the Matrix, she follows. What I propose to do at our next extraction is to launch two or I hope three pairs of missiles toward the point where our past experience predicts the cruiser will extract. We will insert again and very shortly extract a second time to repeat the process if necessary
.”

The plan sounded reasonable on its face. She lacked the expertise to determine whether it really could work, but Daniel was as good a judge of that question as anyone she could think of. For the first time since the
Estremadura
reappeared, Adele could imagine a future which did not involve either capture by Alliance forces or execution out of hand by the crew of the cruiser whose paymasters had been bankrupted when the
Princess Cecile
took her leave from Cremona.

“
We’ll be making quick insertions and extractions, Sissies
,” Daniel said. “
We’ve done that before. Because we’ve done it, we remember how bloody awful it is, and how much we all prayed that we’d never have to do it again. Well, we have to, it’s that simple, so that’s what we’ll do. I have nothing more to say except this: RCN forever!
”

The cheers that followed were real and expected, which made Adele smile wryly. Being on a ship in the Matrix was uncomfortable for human beings. The environment led to hallucinations or perhaps to visions of things which were real—somewhere or somewhen—and were therefore even more uncomfortable to consider.

But the transition between normal space and the Matrix was infinitely worse than time spent beyond the barrier between universes. Sequencing back and forth quickly from one state to the other could leave even veteran spacers vomiting or unconscious on the deck.

As Daniel said, it was necessary. A spacer who pretended that “necessary” allowed him to choose was very quickly dead.

Adele kept the faces of fellow officers as small insets at the top of her screen. To her surprise, Sun looked doubtful instead of enthusiastic as she expected from him when they were about to see action. She echoed his display and found that though he had a gunnery board up, he wasn’t participating in the computerized training scenario.

“Master Sun?” she said on a two-way link. The gunner wasn’t actively involved in the immediate problem, and he certainly looked as though he would appreciate having his thoughts diverted from their present course. “Why do you doubt the success of Captain Leary’s plan?”

“
I never said
—” the gunner blurted, spinning to stare at her. He saw only Adele’s profile, of course. Though they were at adjacent consoles, she preferred to communicate through a filter. Her holographic display provided the illusion of distance even when the reality was less comfortable.

Sun’s horror relaxed into a rueful smile. “
No point in trying to kid you, is there, ma’am?
” he said. “
Look, Six is playing some game, I know he is; but what he says he’s doing, that won’t work. The gunners on that Alliance bitch are just too good, though I hate to say it, over
.”

“Explain what you mean, please,” Adele said. Experts often assumed that when they had given an answer, the steps by which they had arrived at the answer were obvious to their listeners. That was even true—

She smiled very faintly.

—of experts in data collection and sorting.

“
Well, ma’am, it’s like this
,” Sun said, turning his attention toward his display but replacing the training scenario with a blank screen. He either realized that Adele would be echoing it or he had forgotten about her in his focus on the question. “
We come out
—”

A blue bead appeared, though at the front in the lower right corner rather than in the usual center of the display.

“—
here. And they come out here
—”

The red bead appeared kitty-corner from the blue one on the three-dimensional display, on top at the upper back.

“—
always at the same vector, which they do because that gives them the best angle for their guns. So Six knows where they’ll be, right enough, and if nothing else happened I’d lay odds on him fixing their wagon just like he plans. But we’re too close and their gunners, they won’t let it happen!
”

Adele frowned.
I need to show more charity toward people who are puzzled by what I say,
she thought.

She regretted displaying her ignorance so abjectly, but it was better to seem foolish than to take the foolish option of remaining needlessly ignorant. She said, “How is being close a problem, Sun? That leaves less time for the enemy gunners to nudge our missiles out of the way, does it not?”

Missiles weighed five tons apiece and achieved their effects by kinetic energy. They separated into three pieces after they had run all their reaction mass through the High Drive motor which accelerated them to a noticeable fraction of light speed.

There was no way to stop an incoming missile; a target could either dodge it or redirect it with plasma bolts. The metal which a bolt sublimed from one side of a missile shoved the remainder of the projectile in the opposite direction. Skillfully used, plasma cannon could save a ship which was, after all, a point target at the ranges of a normal space battle.

“
If they’re reached burnout, sure
,” said Sun, but he wasn’t agreeing. He pointed to his display. “
But ours won’t, you see? They’ll still have half their reaction mass aboard, and that means
—”

Pairs of azure tracks as fine as spider webs spread from the blue dot toward the projected course of the red dot. One by one, the tracks broke into wobbling spirals. None of them intersected the red dot or even its course.

“—
they’ll blow up when the gunners catch them. Which they will, as sure as we’re sitting on the
Sissie
’s bridge, ma’am. The reaction mass will boil and burst the tank, and the gods alone know where the missile goes off to. It can’t work
.”

“I see,” said Adele. Her mind considered the options. Then, with what for her was a broad smile, she said, “That means there’s a factor we aren’t considering, Sun. I have no idea what it might be, but I’m certain there must be one. If this were a desperation play that Daniel didn’t believe could work, he would have said so.”

“
Extracting
,” Vesey said.

The
Princess Cecile
dropped into sidereal space like light striking a prism. Adele felt ice in her bone marrow, but it was a sensation rather than pain. Her mind was focused on the information appearing on her display. The
Princess Cecile
began to accelerate at the highest rate possible with the High Drive alone.

“
Launching one
,” Daniel announced. A jet of steam, expanding so quickly that it rang like a hammerblow, shoved the missile out of its launch tube. The High Drive motor didn’t light until it was in vacuum where the corrosive exhaust would not damage the
Sissie
’s fabric.

“
Launching two,
” and another
clang!
that rocked the ship and startled anyone who wasn’t familiar with the sequence of events.

Cranes had shifted missiles from the two magazines onto roller tracks. They had started rumbling toward the launch tubes even before the first salvo had left the ship. Because the missiles were so heavy, every stage of the process made the hull tremble as much as the straining High Drive motors did.

Pistons shoved the missiles into the corvette’s pair of tubes. The
Princess Cecile
’s rate of fire was only half that of a destroyer and a tiny fraction of what a battleship could launch in a single salvo. Still, a well-aimed missile from the
Sissie
would finish any target.

Vesey had the conn, so Daniel must consider the attack to be the critical part of his plan. Chief Missileer Chazanoff was very able, or he wouldn’t have been a member of the
Sissie
’s crew. He wouldn’t publically object to Captain Leary pushing him out of his job, but it would offend him. Daniel treated his officers with as much consideration as possible, so he must not have thought he had time to explain the situation to Chazanoff and leave the execustionexecution in his hands.

“
Launching three
,” Daniel said. “
Launching four
.”

The ringing launches followed his calmly spaced words. It was possible for a missile’s track to perturb that of another launched at the same time, so Daniel was providing a two-second delay. He sounded as though he had nothing more on his mind than the question of what to have for lunch.

Because Adele had been considering Chazanoff’s reaction, she echoed his display for a moment. She didn’t expect to make any sense of it—it was an attack board, as she had expected—but though the columns of numbers were meaningless, the schematics seemed clear enough.

The Chief Missileer’s screen was identical to Daniel’s, except that in addition to the pale blue missile tracks, there were four—

“
Launching five
,” said Daniel’s voice. “
Launching six
.”

—now six, additional white tracks leaving the
Princess Cecile
. Chazanoff was predicting that the
Estremadura
would appear at a slightly different location from the one which Daniel was targeting. At the speeds and distances involved in a space battle, the choice was of critical significance.

The High Drive shut off. “
Preparing to insert
,” Vesey announced as the corvette drifted.

The precursors of a ship extracting from the Matrix pulsed in the miniature PPI Adele had retained as a sidebar. Adele imported the new data to her echo of Chazanoff’s attack board.

Chazanoff had been correct: the
Estremadura
was appearing where he, not Daniel, had predicted. The cruiser’s gunners wouldn’t burn out their cannon bores by firing at missiles which did not endanger their ship.

“
Inserting!
” Vesey said. The
Princess Cecile
slid from the sidereal universe into the realm of infinite possibility

***

Daniel was breathing hard, both in response to the past half hour and to what was certainly going to happen when they extracted again in approximately ninety seconds. Even if things went as well as he could hope, the
Sissie
was in for a bad time. The possibilities ranged downward from there, and perhaps a long way downward.

“Command,” he said, keying the system. He had considered using the general push since he liked to keep all the ship’s personnel informed about what was going on, but present matters were really for the command group alone. He didn’t want his officers to feel that they were being judged in front of an audience of their juniors.

“Missileers, as soon as we’ve extracted, launch at maximum rate toward what you predict as the position at which the
Estremadura
will extract. Continue launching after the enemy appears, until and unless I countermand these orders.”

All he could hope from missiles launched on this extraction was to attract the
Estremadura
’s attention, but that was an extremely valuable asset. It was certainly more valuable than retaining the missiles in the
Sissie
’s magazine to add to the value of the loot she would offer to her captors.