Daniel framed his display with the six attack boards and gave pride of place in the center to the Plot-Position Indicator, even though at the present instant it was a pearly blankness. The universe now bathing thePrincess Cecile 's sensors had different physical constants from those of the universe of men. The very concepts of matter and energy as the PPI understood them would be meaningless until extraction was complete.
Extraction…
For an instant, Daniel felt that his hair had turned inward to grow through his body, licking every nerve with a tongue of fire. Then theSissie was back in sidereal space and rushing straight down the throat of a dragon.
TheExpress andEscapade had extracted early again. Both wings of the Alliance squadron were swinging their plasma cannon onto those first targets blurring out of the Matrix. If the destroyers' captains survived, they'd have to expect Admiral James calling them on the carpet.
The precursor effects to an extraction didn't hint at the size of the vessel which was disturbing space-time; the Alliance ships were reacting as though the new arrivals were RCN dreadnoughts. It didn't surprise Daniel as he refined theSissie 's attack on thePleasaunce to see that theRip Waechter was launching a spread of eight missiles. The captain of the Alliance light cruiser must've ordered the attack the instant he saw that the enemy was appearing so close by; he'd lacked the time or inclination to countermand those orders when instead a pair of destroyers materialized.
"Six, I have a solution!" Borries said. "I have a solution, over!"
Daniel had a solution also, but as his finger reached for the Execute button his eye followed the projected tracks of theWaechter 's missiles overlaid on his attack board. The heavy cruiserVineta and the flagshipPleasaunce herself were already engaging the destroyers with their cannon. Quite apart from the damage plasma bolts would do, the bath of ions would prevent the targets from inserting before the missiles crossed their tracks.
"Negative!" Daniel cried as his fingers relegated the presetPleasaunce attack in favor of another of those waiting at the sides of his display. "Negative! Hold for new solution, over!"
A 20-cm plasma bolt from theFormentera hit theSissie 's starboard B-ring antenna, vaporizing it and the yards, rigging, top and topgallant sails. The corvette both jumped and slewed, slammed by the expanding fireball as well as twisting in the side-thrust transmitted through the antenna in the instant before it vanished.
Seams started, but the plasma had vented its energy in the rigging. Daniel knew from experience that by dressing theSissie in a full suit of sails, he could prevent the first bolt, even from a battleship's 8-inch weapon, from reaching the hull.
That was the first bolt only.
ThePrincess Cecile wasn't a proper target for the battleships' guns, but she was the nearest target. Daniel supposed that as a Cinnabar patriot he should be pleased that the enemy was wasting shots which should've been fired at theAlcubiere. However-he grinned-he wasn'tthat good a patriot.
"Six, we've got to launch!" Borries said, but Daniel'd locked theSissie 's missile tubes to the command console. He'd launch when he was certain of his target. TheWaechter 's Chief Missileer hadn't taken time to properly plan his solution, which was going to be a costly mistake.
Admiral James had ordered the Foxhunt element to launch at thePleasaunce before fleeing back into the Matrix, but Daniel had also set up attacks on the four heavy cruisers in the right wing and on theFormentera, the left-wing battleship. He dumped thePleasaunce attack and brought up the solution for the cruiser directly ahead of her in line, theDirektor Heinrich. He modified the preset slightly, then reached for Execute again.
TheExpress launched two missiles. Daniel wasn't sure how her crew managed to do it, because the destroyer had been hammered by plasma bolts from the moment thePrincess Cecile extracted. Even if her hull hadn't been penetrated, it'd be remarkable if any sensors had survived to provide targeting information.
"Launching two!" Daniel said.
"Six, dear Gods no, you'll miss ahead!" Borries said.
The corvette clanged as steam blasted a missile clear of its tube, clanged again as the second missile banged out ten seconds after the first, and then rang with three blows in quick succession. The heavy cruisersHertha andDirektor Heinrich had caught her with 15-cm plasma bolts which stripped away most of the rigging on the port side. Under normal circumstances being hit by a 15-cm plasma bolt would've seemed like walking into the mouth of Hell, but to those aboard a ship that'd just taken a 20-cm round, the cruiser weapons seemed anemic.
"Prepare for insertion!" Daniel said, his hair standing on end. The lights had flickered off and on again, but during the interim the interior metal surfaces had trembled with pale green corposants. He didn't know how long it'd be before he could cancel the hull charges; perhaps there wasn't enough time in the world…
The jolt of induced current had shifted Daniel's display from the attack board back to the PPI which'd been up previously. On it one of theWaechter 's missiles intersected the bead slugged esc forEscapade. The cruiser's missiles'd been aimed as much by luck as skill, but any spacer could tell you there was nothing better than luck-or worse.
Under ideal conditions theSissie would by now have gotten the greasy feel that indicated her substance was severing its material connection with the sidereal universe. She wasn't there yet: too much energy from the ion bolts popped and sizzled in hotspots throughout her hull and rigging.
There was nothing to do but wait. Though-reloads were rumbling toward the missile tubes. Even though launching a second salvo might draw further Alliance attention, thePrincess Cecile had come here to fight.
The steep acceleration curve indicated the Alliance weapons were dual-converter units, as was to be expected from Fleet warships. The range from theWaechter to theEscapade was just long enough that the missile would've expended the water it carried for fuel, but the projectile would barely have begun to separate into three pieces. Such a hit would've wrecked a battleship. It turned theEscapade into two relatively large assemblies, the far bow and the right outrigger, and sent them spinning away in a fan of scrap and gas. Eighty percent of the destroyer's mass was in that expanding spray.
TheAlcubiere had launched ten of the twelve missiles that'd have been a complete salvo. ThePleasaunce had hit her repeatedly with 20-cm bolts as she extracted in company with thePrincess Cecile, and not even a heavy cruiser could accept that punishment without noticing it. It was scarcely a surprise that two of theAlcubiere 's tubes would've been damaged, either by having their caps welded shut or simply warping when the hull twisted.
ThePleasaunce was now using her cannon to fend away the missiles sent toward her by most ships of the Foxhunt element. Not all were well-aimed-theAntigone 's eight weren't even in the right plane; heavy gunfire had smashed the light cruiser as she extracted. Her Chief Missileer must've launched blindly as overloaded consoles sizzled on the verge of meltdown.
But some some RCN missiles were on track, serious threats even to a battleship. Jolts of plasma turned a missile's own mass into vapor which streamed away at high velocity and thrust the remainder of the projectile into a vector which would miss the intended target. None of Foxhunt's missiles would touch thePleasaunce.
And as Borries had said, by braking hard theDirektor Heinrich ensured that theSissie 's two rounds would miss ahead of her. Both 15-cm turrets in the cruiser's bow were blasting great balls of gas from the projectiles, but that was in what a layman would've called an excess of caution. Spacers didn't believe you could be too cautious, though they'd admit that often enough you couldn't be cautious at all.
The outer hull of thePrincess Cecile shivered into balance. TheFormentera continued to pound theAlcubiere, and the Alliance light cruisers were working over the four destroyers which'd extracted late. Nobody seemed concerned about theAntigone, a drifting hulk, nor the corvette draped in the pitiable remains of her rig.
We're going to get out of this after all!
"Ship, we're inserting!" Daniel said as reality flickered.
As the PPI faded to lustrous emptiness, Daniel saw the two things he'd been hoping for. First, theZeno andLao-tze had extracted simultaneously, three light-seconds out-system of thePleasaunce -which was driving directly toward them at one and a half gravities' acceleration.
And second, theDirektor Heinrich was rupturing like a melon hit by a heavy bullet. In dodging theSissie 's pair of missiles, her captain had braked her into the path of theRip Waechter 's initial salvo. Over a tonne of steel had just struck the heavy cruiser amidships, exiting in a fireball of the hull's contents; including her crew.
Adele kept a miniature of Daniel's face at the top of her scren. As a result of the first walloping discharge, it began propagating through her display's holographic volume, displacing-she hoped it wasn't corrupting-the data that was supposed to be there.
She wasn't sure if she was dizzy because of the ion-spawned surge that'd overloaded the lighting circuits or if the thought of her equipment being destroyed was making her sick. Grimacing, she shut off the console, then brought it up again with five quick strokes of her wands.
She'd hope for the best. If the unit was hopelessly compromised, she'd-well, she'd make do. Adele Mundy had experience in making do following a disaster.
"Riggers to the hull!" Daniel ordered. "We'll be extracting again as soon as we can, people. This insertion's just to get us out of the immediate killing zone, though it may not be as quick as I'd like because of the state of the rig. Woetjans, don't hesitate to dump anything if that'll save time. Time's more important than spars that might be repairable. Six out."
Adele's display glowed like an oyster shell gaping in the sunlight; then all the directories she'd had open shimmered into place. Even the image of Daniel's face, now frowning with concentration, was in its accustomed location until she closed it with an angry twist of her wands.
"Signals, this is Cory," the midshipman called from the BDC. "Mistress, me and Blantyre are going out with the riggers. Is that all right, over?"
Adele frowned. Was she to take the call as a statement of fact or a request for permission? And anyway, who was she to give permission?
"Yes, of course, Cory," she said. "But why, if you please?"
"Mistress, we've got suits and we're trained as riggers," Cory said. "We figure we'll do more good cutting loose rigging that we could to back up you and Six, over."
"Go, then!" Adele said and resumed her inspection of her console.
Borries was planning missile attacks. Sun was making keystrokes on his console with increasing violence, but the display wasn't changing; he'd begun to shout curses at it. If the gunnery station had been damaged seriously, what of hers adjacent to it?
She wondered if she'd lost data. The equipment was designed to oscillate storage between two separate backup units. That way if the main unit failed, the storage cell which'd been off-line at the moment of disaster should be complete up to that last split second.
The problem this time was that there'd been several separate jolts. Only the first had done obvious damage, but Adele was well aware that electronic data could've been affected by something she hadn't noticed. She set the unit to self-test, knowing that it would be an indefinite time before it completed the task; knowing also that until it completed the task, she couldn't trust any operation the console conducted.
A sequence of clangs echoed through the ship. The sound wasn't quite regular enough to be mechanical.
Adele looked around in frowning puzzlement. Sun slammed the heel of his land against his console and shouted, "Bloodyfucking hell, it's welded and there's not abloody thing I can do about it from in here!"
"What's the matter, Sun?" Adele said. Normally she'd have needed the intercom. With thePrincess Cecile drifting in the Matrix and only a faint humming from her console, ordinary speech was enough. "And what's the ringing sound, if you know?"
"Ma'am, that's Woetjans cracking the weld holding her hatch shut," said Sun. "Anyway, trying to crack it. From the plasma, you see, same as froze my dorsal turret."
"Oh," said Adele. The explanation was simple and obvious-once she'd been told. So many things were like that-once you've been told.
"If Woetjans can't open it from inside, the crew coming out through the aft ventral hatch'll clear it for them," the gunner continued. He gestured toward his console. "And they'll have to break loose my turret, too; it won't budge whatever I do with the controls."
He grimaced. "I could go out myself once they get the hatch open," he said, "but-well, you know, as soon as we extract there's a chance we'll need the guns; and the ventral turret's fine, no problems."
"I see," said Adele. The crew of thePrincess Cecile was largely composed of people who liked doing their jobs. Neither Sun nor Borries thought of themselves as bringing death and destruction to other human beings-they were just proud of their skill with guns and missiles respectively.
Adele's smile was cold. Sun and Borries were luckier that she was: their targets were beads on a holographic screen. That made it possible for them to divorce themselves from the reality she woke to so often.
She heard the outer hatch cycle open. Reminded by the sound, she rotated out the communications heads she'd locked into their landing position. The aft unit opened normally but the head amidships didn't budge.
That didn't mean it'd been destroyed, of course; Adele had been out on warships after a battle and knew that plasma or vaporized metal could paste a tangle of rigging to the hulls. The midships head might be perfectly all right once the swath of sailcloth had been removed from it.
The bow head, the one she'd left up, had vanished. The readout on her display indicated a gap in the circuit feeding the unit.
"I bet I could shoot'em free," Sun said. "Just one round, not even both tubes, and the recoil'd crack the weld."
He looked over hopefully to see if Adele was agreeing with him. She gave him a stony glare.
"Right," he muttered. "I dunno what's in front of the guns now, and anyhow the riggers're on the hull. Well, they'll clear me, they know how bad we need the guns."
"Ship," announced Daniel, "we'll be extracting in sixty, that's six-zero, seconds, out."
Adele looked at her console. Everything was reading normally. She'd been lucky; which made her think "Sun," she said, "what happened to Vesey? If she was outside when we were hit?"
"Well, it could be she's fine," Sun said, but he twisted his head away and spoke so softly that Adele could barely make out the words. "Why she's out there to begin with, though, it's not my place to say."
"What!" snapped Mundy of Chatsworth, straightening at her console. Does this little oik think he can conceal information from me?
"What he means, ma'am," said Hogg unexpectedly from the back of the command console, "is that the Cazelet boy's too busy mooning after you to give Vesey so much as a look. She hasn't been too tightly wrapped ever since Dorst bought it, so maybe she just decided not to come in."
Adele stared at him. Hogg looked back; not challenging her, just a dumpy countryman the wrong side of fifty perched like a sack of potatoes on a jumpseat. But not afraid, either; or anyway, not about to shirk his duty to the Leary family because a member of it might shoot him for answering the question she'd asked.
For in Hogg's mind, Adele was a member of the Leary family. In Daniel's mind, and in her own too, she supposed.
Adele collapsed her display. "Tovera," she said, "is this true?"
"Yes, mistress," Tovera said. "I think Blantyre tried to talk to Vesey, but it didn't go well."
"And I had a chat with the kid while we were on Pelosi," Hogg said evenly. He crossed his hands over his paunch, but he was as tense as Adele'd ever seen him. "It seemed to me that being a gentleman didn't mean looking right through a nice girl like she was a piece of glass, you know? I think he'd've taken a swing at me if he hadn't decided it was beneath him."
Tovera giggled. Hogg looked at her and said, "Say, it wouldn't be the first time I've give a young gentleman a spanking when he acted up. I haven't forgot how t' do it."
"Thank you, Tovera," Adele said. Her lips were dry. She brought up her display. It appeared to be operating normally, though she wouldn't know for certain until they returned to sidereal space and received sensor inputs. "And thank you, Hogg."
I should stick to machines, she thought. But even when I do, I create disasters. I don't belong in a world of human beings!
"Extracting!" Daniel announced.
The shiver of universes forming within one another was a relief from the leaden misery in Adele's heart.
Daniel stabbed the Execute button and shivered at the start of the process of extraction. He felt as though he'd swallowed a tortoise whole and was now trying to vomit it out with its shell carving away whatever remained of his esophagus.
It'd taken two minutes in the Matrix instead of the one Daniel'd expected before thePrincess Cecile was far enough from the kill zone for him to extract into normal space again. The corvette was small and flimsy; worse, more than half her personnel were on the hull with no protection. The fireball from a single plasma bolt would cook them all.
Pushing the button wasn't usually Daniel's job any more. It was the sort of mechanical ash and trash duty which he left to whoever was senior in the BDC while he focused on the course or the attack or the latest tidbit which Adele'd dredged up from the Gods knew where.
If Vesey'd been aboard, he'd have handed the command over to her and gone out to help Woetjans. The bosun had an eye for how to proceed on what looked to most people-certainly looked to Captain Leary-like an impossible tangle. Woetjans would be sorting the debris like a professional gambler shuffling with never a miscue.
Daniel would only've been muscle under Woetjans' direction, but despite spending too bloody much time on his butt he still had a good set of muscles. It'd be nice to walk through the woods of Bantry again with Hogg, carrying shotguns but mostly just reconnecting with the living creatures of his childhood.
A lot of people had died today. He was sorry for every one of them and especially sorry about Vesey; but he was RCN and the battle wasn't over yet.
The corvette's return to sidereal space was as shockingly sudden as being dropped in ice water. The PPI came live. TheSissie 'd crawled to get here, but she'dextracted where he'd wanted her: thirty light-seconds from the kill zone between the Alliance wings. They were well above the plane of the Jewel System's ecliptic.
Images of the corvette's outer hull formed a montage on the bottom half of the command display. They showed sixteen angles at a time, shifting as different shutters opened. Daniel ignored that for the moment while he checked how the battle'd developed while he was directing thePrincess Cecile to safety.
The battle had developed very well-for Cinnabar.
Both RCN battleships had launched a maximum-effort salvo at thePleasaunce. That meant forty-seven missiles from theZeno, a very good percentage of the forty-eight tubes she mounted, and a perfect thirty-six missiles from theLao-tze.
A battleship's hull torqued more than that of a corvette. Stresses concentrated at weak points on the exterior, frequently jamming shutters or even crumpling a missile tube within the fabric of the hull. For an old ship like theLao-tze to manage a full launch implied both remarkable preparation and luck.
The paired salvos were overwhelming. ThePleasaunce was at zero deflection to the oncoming missiles, so she hadn't a prayer of maneuvering out of the swept zone. Because her hull was skewed to her line of travel, she was able to swing eight 20-cm turrets onto defense. Half a dozen projectiles showed on the PPI as expanding balls of gas, but not even a battleship could fend off an attack of that magnitude.
A missile struck portside on thePleasaunce 's axis, just behind the bridge. Because of the quartering angle it travelled through much of the hull before exiting to starboard as a fireball a hundred feet forward of the stern. That by itself turned the battleship to blazing junk, but three more projectiles hit the wreck within a matter of seconds.
One of the missiles had been vaporized without being nudged from its programmed course. As a final insult, it swept as a cloud of glowing steel into the remains of the stricken dreadnought which was by now a larger cloud. Daniel expanded the scene momentarily; it looked like an astronomical image of galaxies colliding.
Daniel wiped the display again, his lips pursing on the sour image. May their souls find peace. He didn't in the least regret the destruction of one of the Alliance's newest and most powerful battleships, but he'd have preferred it to happen when the ship was in harbor with only an anchor watch aboard.
Mind, if he'd been captain of theZeno, he'd have felt a thrill when he pushed Execute; there was no way he'd have left that duty for his Missile Officer. This was a war, and the best way to end it quickly was to drive the Alliance Fleet from the cosmos. Destroying a Planetary Class battleship was a good start, and forcing a heavy cruiser into similar ruin was abloody nice piece of work for a corvette!
The Barnyard element was launching a second salvo, but for now Daniel gave his attention to thePrincess Cecile 's damage. There should've been sixteen images at a time cycling on his display, but at the moment seven were either black, indicating the lenses were covered, or iridescent because there was no signal to feed them. One of the black squares suddenly cleared as a pair of riggers lifted a ten-foot length of spar and the blobs of sail melted to it. They shoved the tangle out into space.
ThePrincess Cecile was Kostroman built. She'd been a reasonably well-found vessel when Lieutenant Leary captured her, but when the prize money started flowing in he'd brought her equipment up to RCN standard.
Among other things, he'd replaced the original hull cameras with triple units so that he could twice rotate new lenses into place in event of damage to the one which'd been in use. He did that now to those connected to pearly images, though one of the four simply went black when the head was replaced.
The Navy Board expected its warships to be damaged in service. Not all of them were, but no ship under Daniel Leary's command had been that sort of exception.
That was certainly the case with theSissie on her present deployment. The injury to the rigging was much worse than Daniel had expected: he'd known the three 15-cm bolts from cruisers had stripped all but the A ring antenna from the port side, but some of the yards had become secondary projectiles. Because of the angle they'd sheared four ventral antennas off just above the mainsail yards.
No wonder theSissie 'd handled like a pig in the Matrix! They could jury rig her using spars, but Daniel'd have to pick his courses very carefully if he were going to bring her home before they all had long white beards. That was all right if they were going home, but heaven help them if the corvette had to go into action again without a lengthy spell in a shipyard first.
They'd be short of sail fabric as well as replacement spars. Well, perhaps the magazines in Port Delacroix could help-though thePrincess Cecile was scarcely the only member of the Diamondia Squadron needing repair.
If necessary, Admiral James could commandeer the rigging from the freighters in the Outer Harbor and pay the owners in treasury warrants. The civilians wouldn't be happy about it, but spacers who'd just saved them from the Alliance wouldn't be in a mood to listen to moaning. Certainly Daniel wouldn't.
The images flipped one after the other like tumbling dominos as the pickups rotated around the four angles each covered. Another wall of debris lifted and sailed off in its own separate orbit. Past the legs of the spacers who'd thrown the tangle-the team was Blantyre and Cory, each with a short come-along-Daniel saw the port outrigger. A plasma bolt had seared away the end, including one of the High Drive motors.
Are the remaining internal partitions tight? We'd better learn before we make a water landing.
There must be fifty people out on the hull. Both rigging watches were there as a matter of course, but in addition to the midshipmen every Power Room tech with a hard suit was helping to cut away the wreckage. TheSissie 'd escaped without hull damage, but every spacer knew that a dreadnought battle was no place for a corvette which had to move at a waddle.
Though-when Daniel glanced again at the PPI, it seemed to him that the battle was over. The cruiserVineta was maneuvering to pick up survivors of thePleasaunce. There wouldn't be many even if the crew'd donned suits before the action, but perhaps a hundred of the thousand or more might survive if they could be gathered aboard another ship while their air supply lasted.
The Alliance left wing, theFormentera with the light cruisersDurston andWaechter, were headed toward open space, shaking out their rigs in preparation for inserting into the Matrix. They didn't launch missiles because the remains of the right wing screened the RCN battleships.
It crossed Daniel's mind that theFormentera and her escorts might reappear and turn the battle around by attacking from an unsuspected angle… but that was howhe thought. It was unlikely that an Alliance captain who'd just watched his sister ship being blown to vapor along with the admiral commanding would be planning attacks on an enemy of twice his force.
TheZeno andLao-Tze had launched a second salvo, this time targeting the heavy cruisersHertha andViceroy Adelbert. Daniel was relieved to see that the older battleship got off only twenty-nine missiles this time. He had as high an opinion of the RCN's professionalism as any man alive, but if theLao-tze 's launch had been perfect again, he'd have to believe that Captain Stickel was in league with the Devil.
The two cruisers were accelerating in their original directions of travel. Because both had been going away from the Barnyard element-they'd come out of the Matrix on reciprocal courses to that of the flagship-they'd be able to reinsert before the missiles reached them.
TheVineta was preparing to insert also. Her captain's instinct to help a fallen comrade had put the expanding cloud of thePleasaunce between her and the RCN battleships, so the incoming salvos weren't directed at her. A heavy cruiser shouldn't have been worrying about rescue in the middle of a battle, but in this case mistaken compassion had saved the lives of her whole crew.
TheZeno began firing the cannon in her four forward turrets at theHertha andViceroyAdelbert. The surviving Alliance vessels hadn't launched missiles before turning to flight, so the battleship's weapons weren't needed for self defense.
The distance was too great for bolts to do damage, but they'd make it difficult for the cruisers to insert. Even if the targets were outside the core of the flux, the sprays of ions unbalanced the ships' surface charge. TheLao-tze added her gunfire to theZeno 's, either responding to command or simply picking up on her consort's good idea.
The destroyers which'd been picketing Diamondia chose this moment to extract. Presumably they'd intended to join the left wing, but in the event only theT 72 was where it should have been. TheT 65 appeared closer to theAlcubiere than to the position of the left wing before the Alliance vessels began running.
Daniel thought theAlcubiere was derelict. To his amazement and delight, she slammed a pair of 6-inch plasma bolts into theT 65 's belly, blasting both outriggers and the High Drive motors. The destroyer immediately began blatting her surrender on the 20-meter and microwave bands. Her fellow slipped into the Matrix with the remainder of the left wing and theVineta.
TheHertha andViceroy Adelbert disintegrated under more hits than Daniel could count even when he slowed down the action. It was like watching ships of sand when the tide swept in.
Daniel took a deep breath and let it out. He felt his muscles begin to relax for the first time since Admiral James had transmitted course data to the Foxhunt element.
"Ship," he said, though more than half the crew was on the hull at the moment where they couldn't hear him. "This is Six. Well done, fellow Sissies. Bloody well done! Six out."
On the hull montage, Daniel saw two riggers twist a length of spar out of the sail it was holding stretched against the hull. To his surprise they dropped the tubing to the side instead of cutting it free and launching it into space.
The imaging head rotated to a different lens; Daniel switched it back manually to watch the riggers kneel. When they rose, they were lifting a figure in a hard suit. The silver-painted right arm meant it was Vesey. They started for the forward airlock, one of them gesturing in sign language to alert their watch commander.
Daniel licked his dry lips and brought up a navigation display. Shortly he'd plot a course to the wreck of theDirektor Heinrich. ThePrincess Cecile sailed like a barge just now, but it wasn't far to go. They'd save who they could from the crew of the cruiser they'd destroyed.
First, though, they'd pick up Matthews and Cazelet. That pair had gone a long way toward winning the battle…