What Distant Deeps (44 page)

He didn’t ask Sun and Rocker to acknowledge, because they were properly too busy to worry about that. They would obey, though, or they’d lose their ratings as soon as this was over.

Daniel grinned. Adele would have added, “if we all survive.” He didn’t think in those terms. It wasn’t that he was optimistic; rather, it just didn’t occur to him that he and the Sissies were going to fail.

The nearest anomaly congealed into the Z 46. Most of her antennas had been lowered, though her crew hadn’t had time to furl or replace the sails. They were a mare’s nest of tatters that would be the devil’s own job to police up afterwards, but at least the gun turrets had clear fields of fire.

Daniel moved to lock out the Sissie’s dorsal turret, but Sun was already shifting his guns to target red two. He was a small man and very fit, with a wasp waist and close-cropped hair. Sweat beaded on his forehead and the backs of his hands, and he wore an expression of fierce delight.

Sun liked what he did. Everybody Daniel knew who was really good at his job also liked that job. For the specialized gunnery required by the situations into which Daniel put the Princess Cecile, there was nobody in the RCN better than Sun.

Four cutters shimmered into normal existence. The dorsal turret fired two shots; both into the Palmyrene’s stern, but the target was so frail that it didn’t matter that the bolts weren’t perfectly centered. The bow spun away like a paper lantern blown by the gases of its own destruction.

The ventral guns whanged, punctuating the rumble from the forward turret as Sun shifted to the next target. Rocker tripped his guns early, but the second bolt grazed the target instead of crackling past as the first had. A grazing hit was good enough, gutting the cutter like a fish and killing everyone in or on her hull.

The Z 42 came out of the Matrix at 1100 miles, broadside to the Sissie’s bow. That was very respectable astrogation, for all that her captain was a stiff-necked bigot.

Daniel completed his computations. More—many more, at least thirty—anomalies were forming close by.

It was beyond question that the Palmyrenes were keying on the Princess Cecile. The Autocrator had taken Captain Leary’s snub personally. She was reacting as an angry noble, not as a general or a head of state. In the longer term that was probably to the benefit of Zenobia’s defenders, but it meant short-term problems for the Sissie and her crew.

“All Posy units,” Daniel said. “This is Posy Three-six, transmitting new course data for Posy Three, out.”

He was dancing on a razor blade. Even if he succeeded, the damage was going to be terrible, terrible. The odds were just too long.

Rocker fired; his target exploded violently. The cutter had been so close that fragments of it would probably hit the Sissie, though they wouldn’t do as much damage as the—

Four rockets went off in quick succession along the corvette’s underside. The damage-control sidebar went thirty-percent amber with a scattering of red speckles: seals had strained or failed completely. Daniel heard internal hatches banging shut.

“Cease fire!” he ordered, locking out the guns as he spoke. The gunners would be furious, but he was right and he was Six regardless of whether he was right or wrong. “Ship, prepare to insert ASAP. Inserting ASAP, out.”

Six more rockets crashed along the Sissie’s spine. More seals and seams were leaking, and the buzz of the High Drive had risen to a ragged whine. Several motors had been knocked out by rockets which had hit the underside, and the outriggers—made of much thinner plating than the hull—would require extensive repairs before the Princess Cecile could make a water landing.

The warheads weren’t intended to do serious hull damage, but a continued series of hammerblows would reduce the corvette to junk sooner rather than later. “As soon as possible” didn’t necessarily mean “soon enough.” Daniel kept his finger on the Execute button and under his breath prayed to the gods in whom he didn’t really believe at this instant.

The Princess Cecile began to slide into the Matrix. The cutter which had fired the most recent salvo was inserting also, preparing to reload her rocket launchers and resume the attack in company with scores of her companions.

Just before the Sissie reached the merciless safety of the Matrix, the Palmyrene cutter became a fireball. A 13-cm bolt from the Z 46 had caught it.

Good luck to you and yours, Otto, Daniel thought as blazing needles entered his body with the transition. And good luck to us Sissies as well.

The Zenobians didn’t need luck: they needed Force Posy. So far, so good.

CHAPTER 25

Zenobia System

Adele continued to puzzle vainly about how the Palmyrenes communicated. Beyond question the cutters inserted and extracted in organized groups, though “squadrons” might be too formal a word; “schools” or “flocks” seemed more in keeping with Palmyrene society.

Perhaps Daniel would know whether there was a collective noun for maggots. That would be even more suitable.

Adele’s self-deprecating smile was too slight even to make her lips quiver. She was apparently still angry about the abysmal Palmyrene record-keeping.

A voice somewhere on the fringes of Adele’s consciousness said, “Mistress?” She ignored it as she ignored the repeated cycling of the airlocks and the sharp but less identifiable sounds coming through the hull.

The Palmyrenes did communicate. Unless they were psychic—which Adele wasn’t ruling out, though they hadn’t shown any signs of psychic abilities on Stahl’s World—the hypothesis that best explained the situation was that they were communicating passively.

All that would take was a single low-power laser or even a UHF transmitter: the cutters were generally close enough together to make that possible. The cruiser could send such a signal to a key member of the swarm; that cutter’s maneuvers could then be copied by several other ships—clan members? peers who took a whim to follow?—whose crews had been watching the first.

That wouldn’t communicate the details of the planned maneuver, but the Palmyrenes didn’t require anything more than the signal to insert. The cutter captains were doubtless as able to follow one another as they were to track their prey. They seemed to feel their way through the Matrix.

Adele couldn’t see her screen. She froze—What’s happened?—and realized that Tovera had leaned into the holographic display.

“Mistress,” Tovera said. She was wearing an air suit, the light-weight, flexible garment intended for ship’s side personnel who for one reason or another had to go out into vacuum. “Captain Leary has ordered everyone to put on their suits before we extract. Woetjans and I will help you into yours.”

“No,” said Adele, frowning at both the request and the presumption of it. “I’m going to find a way to read Pal—”

Hands gripped either side of her rib cage and lifted her away from the console. Her right heel kicked the couch as Woetjans set her upright beside it, then released her.

Adele spun in cold fury. Tovera held Adele’s personal data unit so that it didn’t drop to the deck when the bosun lifted its owner away.

Woetjans was wearing an air suit; her face was as gray as a corpse’s. Sunken cheeks and dilated pupils showed that she was on heavy medication even though she was no longer hooked to the Medicomp—as she obviously should be.

“Woetjans, why are you in an air suit?” Adele said, the first thing that flashed into her mind after she realized the situation and her anger sluiced away. “I thought you always wore a rigging suit.”

“I’m going out on the hull,” Woetjans said, turning toward the bridge hatchway. “They need me on the hull.”

“Mistress, don’t let her,” Tovera hissed in what would have been an access of concern in someone who felt concern. Surely a sociopath couldn’t learn to feel emotion? That would be like a cripple growing a new leg.

The situation clarified in Adele’s mind; she had finally understood. She snapped, “Woetjans, I need you! Help me with my suit or I won’t be able to get into it.”

Woetjans was in an air suit because fragments of rocket warheads had damaged her rigging suit beyond quick repair. Many chunks of steel had continued on into Woetjans’ legs and torso.

“Ma’am?” said the bosun, staggering as she changed direction. “Yes, ma’am, your suit. You got to be suited up, because the wogs’re gonna kick the crap out of us, you know? I got your suit.
 
.
 
.
 
.”

Woetjans’ face grew puzzled. Adele looked at the deck beyond her and saw an air suit, rolled and packed into its helmet. The bosun must have dropped it when she lifted Adele from the console.

“Here it is,” Adele said, stretching to reach the packet. If Woetjans bent, the chances were that she would fall flat. She still had her strength, but the drugs managing her pain left her operating on reflex alone. “You can help me, Woetjans.”

The bosun’s hands began unrolling the suit. Her blank, black eyes were turned toward the bow, but she didn’t appear to be looking at anything.

Fiducia was seated at the missile console. The other bridge stations, including the command console, were empty. Adele blinked and said, “What’s happened? What’s gone wrong?”

“All the riggers are on the hull clearing the damage,” Tovera said. “And the officers with training as riggers; all but Vesey in the BDC.”

She smiled faintly, though Adele wasn’t sure what the expression meant. “Hogg’s out with the Captain, too,” Tovera added. “I doubt he’s any more use than I would be, but since you stayed on the bridge, I didn’t have to make a fool of myself.”

I should have been aware of that, Adele thought. What was I doing? Examining imagery of the Palmyrene fleet, I suppose, but wouldn’t I have noticed the bridge emptying?

“Where is Sun?” she said as took in the situation. “Shouldn’t he be at his position?”

“B Dorsal folded over the turret, ma’am,” Woetjans said, stretching the air suit between her spread arms. Adele had almost forgotten the bosun’s presence. “A bloody rocket sheared the antenna off right at the base hinge, and the stays twisted over the gun barrels when the mess come down. Sun’s helping clear it.”

Woetjans closed her eyes and swayed briefly, then opened them again. “You put your suit on so I can go out with them, ma’am,” she said. Her voice was as hollow and lifeless as an echo from a catacomb.

Tovera whispered in Adele’s ear, “There’s nobody else aboard she’ll listen to, mistress. I asked her to help me, you see?”

Yes, of course, Adele thought. Aloud she said, “Hold the legs of the suit open for me, Woetjans. I’ll put it on.”

There were few enough people aboard the Sissie who would expect the bosun to take their orders anyway. Not even Daniel could be sure that Woetjans would obey if she thought her duty lay in a different direction.

Adele smiled ruefully. She could sidetrack the barely conscious bosun not by force of authority, but because Woetjans knew at the core of her being that Officer Mundy was hopelessly inept. Adele needed to be helped with ship’s business which a fourteen-year-old apprentice could handle without supervision.

“Are we seriously damaged?” Adele said as she stepped into the suit, resting her hand on Woetjans’ shoulder. She tried not to put any weight on it, but when her right toe caught on the fabric and she started to topple, the bosun caught and steadied her with careless ease.

“The rig’s tore up,” Woetjans said with mechanical calm. “The one antenna is all, but some yards was hit and the sails is all tore to crap. Even furled, you know? Cut to crap. We’ll have to hang a whole new suit, pretty much.”

She swayed again. Tovera stepped behind the bosun and leaned into her shoulder blade. For a moment Adele didn’t think that would be enough, but Woetjans recovered her balance.

“And the hull?” Adele said, trying to sound brightly interested. Air pressure within the hull seemed to be down, and a damage control party of technicians was spraying bright pink sealant along seams in the corridor ceiling.

“Not my duty,” Woetjans said. “They won’t have no trouble, though. They can use the scrap sails for the bad patches anyhow, stick them down on the plating. They’re not good for anything else, all tore to crap.”

Adele had her arms into the sleeves of her suit. She faced the bosun to let her seal the center seam. Instead, Woetjans turned and said, “Got to get out and clear the rig. Tore to crap!”

“Woetjans!” Adele said. “Help me!”

The bosun faced around and swayed. Tovera stepped back, braced to catch but not to steady her. Better that Woetjans fall than that she go out on the hull in her current state.

The airlock cycled open. A phalanx of spacers bulled through with Daniel and Sun in the lead. Hogg in an air suit and a grim expression followed close behind his master. Tovera guided Woetjans to the side, but reflex had already started the bosun moving out of the way of incoming personnel.

“Ship, this is Six!” Daniel said, his words echoing from the PA system. He’d taken off his helmet but was shouting into it as he trotted toward the bridge. “Prepare to extract in ninety, that is—”

He banged down onto the command console.

“—nine zero seconds! We’re going to well and truly stick it to them, Sissies!”

Daniel had helped the riggers in pitching Dorsal B over the side instead of strapping it to the hull to be broken down later. In theory Dasi was in charge of the team; but since Six was present, the bosun’s mate would probably have tried to salvage the upper two-thirds of the antenna and the attached yards.

That would have been the wrong decision. It would have cost time, and that might have meant losing the whole ship. Daniel’s hand signals to the riggers might have been missed in the general haste, but he’d stepped close with his heavy loppers and cut away the shrouds binding the antenna to the hull.

Whereupon the base of the mast rotated free and caught Daniel one hell of a crack on the right thigh. His rigging suit saved him from a broken bone, but he was pretty sure that he had—or anyway, would have—quite a bruise.

That was cheap at the price. If he hadn’t gone out on the hull, he’d have been biting his nails at the command console, eaten up with misery that the Princess Cecile hadn’t reached her extraction point yet. Labor which was physically and mentally exacting was just what Captain Daniel Leary needed to keep sharp for what came next.