When the Tide Rises: Chapter Fourteen

Above Churchyard

    Adele watched the Stager Brothers begin its attack run. Despite Captain Stout's prickliness, his approach through the top levels of the atmosphere was as smooth as that of any starship could be.

    She smiled. Perhaps being prickly was a necessary part of being good. There were certainly people who'd found Adele Mundy difficult over the years, and even Daniel ruffled feathers with his focus on accomplishing the mission regardless of proprieties.

    Ever since the Columbine came alongside, the Ladouceur had been ringing like the interior of a steel drum. A warship in action was always noisy, but this time the missiles bumping down the rollerway were being transferred to the smaller ship rather than sliding into the cruiser's own launching tubes. Woetjans had all her riggers on the hull, manhandling the projectiles across the gap separating the ships and clamping them into the Columbine's hull mounts.

    Adele didn't imagine the effort was going to be of any use, though. Certainly none of the previous attacks had been.

    "Adele?" said Daniel unexpectedly. She'd carefully avoided interrupting him at a time when he had his hands full. Out of squeamishness she hadn't even echoed the command display as she sometimes did from curiosity. Since things were going so badly, it would've felt to her like staring at a friend who'd just upset the table at a formal dinner.

    "Yes, Daniel?" she said, replying on the same two-way link and pleased to ignore protocol.

    The Stager Brothers had made two circuits of Churchyard, cutting progressively deeper as if shaving thin slices from the atmosphere. As Stout started his third orbit, he launched his four plasma missiles. This was no part of Adele's job, but simply as a matter of interest she'd expanded an image of the vessel coming around the curve of the planet.

    The only communications that she had to monitor right now were the excited chatter of both the Alliance and Bagarian forces. The Alliance voices were predictably in a better humor, but nothing important was being said by either side.

    "I'm going to be taking charge of the Columbine for the next attack," Daniel said. "Can you keep me in direct touch with the entire squadron?"

    One of the Stager Brothers' missiles didn't appear to separate until the ship drove up through the atmosphere again on gimbaled thrusters. The missile continued for a few moments on a ballistic course, then began to tumble; it quickly broke up.

    "One moment," said Adele, because she didn't give Daniel a certain answer without knowing everything about the Columbine's commo suite. She'd never had occasion to learn that information before now–

    But she'd gathered it, because it was information and that was what she did, gather information against need. In the particular instance she'd thought knowing the particulars of the Bagarian ships might help her communicate with them, though in the event she'd decided that the 20-meter band was all she could count on.

    The thrusters of the Stager Brothers' remaining three missiles lighted. One blew up three seconds later, rocking the ship that launched it. The blast didn't appear to do serious damage, but Captain Stout's torrent of profanity was justifiable if pointless.

    Adele brought up the data on the Columbine and considered it coldly. She smiled: she did everything coldly. Even when others might think that she'd lost her temper, she was really quite cold inside.

    In the particular instance, the data was better than she'd feared it might be. She said, "Daniel, the Columbine has a working laser communicator. It's a single-head device, but the Ladouceur can retransmit to the rest of the squadron without a noticeable lag. Oh!"

    "Is there a problem, Signals?" Daniel said. He remained on the private channel, but he'd slipped into formality to jog her out of her silence.

    The problem is that I have to be at both ends of the transmission in order to make the relay work.

    The thruster of the Stager Brothers' third missile cut off abruptly. Without power for its gyroscope, the missile wobbled, swapped ends, and tore itself into a shower of fragments. They blazed white with the friction of their passage through the atmosphere.

    Instead of replying to Daniel directly, Adele switched manually to the command channel and said, "Cory, I'll be away from my console for a considerable length of time. Until I return, can you relay laser transmissions from the Columbine to the rest of the squadron if I set the system up for you? Over."

    "Ah," said Cory. "I'm sure I can, sir, over."

    "Negative, Officer Mundy," Daniel said. He didn't exactly shout, but he meant to be heard and obeyed. "Your presence with the Ladouceur's sensor and commo suites will be absolutely necessary if something unpredictable occurs. You will not be leaving the bridge. If that means a gap in my control of the rest of the squadron, then that's still the better choice, over."

    The Stager Brothers' last missile began to describe a slow spiral. Adele was too busy to magnify her image of it, but she'd seen several rounds from the Columbine and Forsyte 14 fail in the same fashion. Exhaust had eaten a hole in the thruster nozzle so that plasma was pushing sideways as well as straight back. As Adele'd learned to expect, the missile carved increasingly wider circles until a gush of flame blew the whole back end away.

    All sixteen missiles from the three Bagarian ships had failed before they got within ten miles of the surface of Churchyard. Adele didn't know what Daniel thought he could accomplish since the problem wasn't in the way the rounds had been aimed, but that wasn't her job to determine.

    "Captain, I don't think Cory can keep the Columbine's sender focused on us, on the Ladouceur, if both ships are maneuvering," she said. "He can handle the relay, that's automated. I–"

    "Captain Leary?" Rene Cazelet interrupted. Adele knew Rene'd added himself to the command channel that linked all the commissioned and warrant officers aboard, but she hadn't given the matter any thought when she moved the discussion there to include Cory. "I can direct the head manually. I don't mean to imply criticism of Mister Cory; your Cinnabar naval equipment is automated, but I trained in the merchant service with apparatus very like what the Columbine has. Over."

    "Adele?" Daniel said, back on the two-way link.

    Adele looked at the image of Rene Cazelet on her display. She knew that she could meet his eyes directly by just looking up and glancing across the bridge, but she preferred the electronic semblance. His expression was clear and open; and underneath that, afraid. He was afraid that she wouldn't think he was competent.

    Which meant that he really thought that he could do the job. Well, he had more data on the subject that she did, so she might as well accept his judgment.

    "All right," Adele said. "Cazelet, accompany Captain Leary to the Columbine. Keep a real-time connection with me, and do everything else he tells you to. Over."

    Or did she mean, "Out"?

    "Yes, mistress!" the boy said as he leaped from his console. He was beaming as he strode to the suit locker in the rotunda beyond the bridge hatch.

    "Lieutenant Liu, you have the conn," Daniel said as he rose. Hogg got up also. Daniel added, "Hogg, you can stay aboard the Ladouceur. Space may be tight on the Columbine's bridge, and there's nothing for you to do, over."

    "Sure there is, young master," Hogg said, speaking loudly over the sound of the air handler. "That wog captain may not want to give you his seat, admiral's pips or no."

    As he spoke, Hogg pulled his big folding knife from a pocket. It had a handguard in the form of a knuckleduster.

    "I'll come along to reason with him," Hogg concluded, tossing the knife–still closed–in the air and catching it again.

 

---

 

    "Captain Julian, gentlemen," said Daniel as he and Hogg stepped out of the airlock. They'd taken their helmets off before the hatch undogged, so he didn't have to struggle with that task while the three men in Columbine's forward compartment stared at him in surprise. He hadn't warned Julian by radio because he shared Hogg's opinion that the Bagarian captain wouldn't be in agreement with his plan.

    "What're you doing here?" David Julian demanded. He struggled awkwardly to rise from his console. It was placed in the far bow facing inward, so that the captain seated there could see everybody in the forward compartment.

    "I'm going to take the Columbine in on this run, Captain Julian," Daniel said cheerily. "I regret the suddenness of this."

    In fact Daniel regretted a lot of things, certainly including the fact that he was cutting corners in a fashion that could only be described as discourteous to a fellow spacer. Admiral James and the Bagarian Republic both depended on clearing the cluster of Alliance bases, though, and this seemed to be the only way to do that in a reasonable length of time.

    "You'll do nothing of the sort!" Julian said in a scandalized tone. "This is my ship. I own her!"

    Daniel stepped around the console, noting with relief that the seat was so oversized that he could use it without stripping off his hard suit. That was a common feature on tramp freighters, since the crew could rarely depend on the climate control system or the vessel remaining airtight either one. If the controls couldn't be operated by people wearing suits, they couldn't be operated at all.

    Captain Julian wasn't suited up, but he filled and overflowed the console; Daniel instinctively sucked in his gut. Mentally, he murmured a promise to really cut back on his meals. Mind, he'd made the same promise every time he'd put on his Dress Whites during the past six months.

    "He most certainly is not the owner of the Columbine!" Adele's voice rattled from the implant in Daniel's left ear. "He sold the ship to the government for one point five million ostrads, on the basis of a valuation by Petrus Lascaux. Who appears to be Julian's brother-in-law!"

    "I'm very sorry, Captain," Daniel said. He didn't suppose he sounded any sorrier than he felt. "Nonetheless you knew this might happen when you sold the Columbine to the government for one and a half million ostrads."

    Because Julian had risen to confront Daniel, the console's empty seat was between them. Daniel set his armored right foot on it, knowing the hard suit trumped the Bagarian's greater bulk.

    The information from Adele didn't change anything but the words, though. Daniel would've commandeered a private vessel if he'd had to, counting on his admiral's rank to justify the action; or if not that, then success wiping the slate clean. If he didn't succeed, he'd probably be dead and the question of whether he'd committed piracy wouldn't matter.

    The airlock cycled again. It only held two suited figures at a time, so Adele's friend Cazelet had to come through after Daniel and Hogg had.

    Julian clenched his fist and said, "You can get your Cinnabar ass off this ship, buddy, or–"

    "Or what, lard-butt?" Woetjans said. "You're talking to Mister Leary. That means you keep a civil tongue in your head or somebody's likely to pull it out!"

    "Who're you?" Julian said in a tone of wonderment. He lowered his arm, all bluster vanished.

    Daniel half-rotated his body; the rigid suit kept him from glancing over his shoulder as he'd have done in street clothes. Cazelet was there, all right, but the bosun had entered ahead of him. She held the short come-along she'd been using to lever the plasma missiles into their cradles on the hull.

    "Six, the kid here–"

    She pointed a thumb over her shoulder; Cazelet hopped back. Behind them both, the airlock was cycling again.

    "–told us what you were pulling. We sent his riggers onto the Laddie, but me'n four a' my crew are gonna handle the rig while you're aboard. Or handle any bloody thing at all, right?"

    "Right!" said Daniel briskly. "Captain Julian, if you'll make yourself as comfortable as you can on one of the benches, we'll take care of business so that you can have your ship back."

    Dasi and Barnes were the next pair of Sissies out of the airlock. Like the bosun, they carried the tools they'd been using out on the hull.

    "We cast this tub loose from the Laddie, Six," Barnes said cheerfully. "Say, we going to put it to the wogs again?"

    Dasi glanced at the two spacers who'd been in the compartment when Daniel arrived. "My buddy means Alliance wogs, not you lot," he said. He pursed his full lips in consideration. "That's right, ain't it, Six?"

    "Perfectly correct, Dasi," Daniel said, checking the little freighter's systems. Cazelet settled himself on the console's jump seat; the controls on that side were already live, probably by accident.

    The Power Room with the fusion bottle and a crew of three was the Columbine's only other pressurized compartment. The engineer hadn't opened the hatch to see what was going on in the fore cabin and Daniel didn't see any reason to disturb him.

    The aft two-thirds of the hull was partitioned into three separate holds, empty now except for crew stores. The total volume was slight. Bulk cargo would be slung externally, much as the missiles were being carried now.

    The nozzle of Thruster Three was paper thin; the Columbine could make this attack using only the fore and aft pairs, but to lift with a full cargo requiring all six thrusters seemed a recipe for disaster. According to their internal diagnostics the four High Drive motors were fine, but a scan of the log indicated that Starboard Aft didn't develop better than 70% of its rated impulse. That could mean the pump was failing, the feed line had a blockage, or for that matter that there was an instrumentation flaw. Again, it didn't matter for now.

    Sayer and Braun shambled out of the airlock. Anja Braun, a stocky woman who could kick her heel through a brick wall, looked at Woetjans and asked, "What you want us t'do, Chief?"

    "Sit your butts down till I tell you," Woetjans growled. She slapped the come-along into the palm of her left glove. It was an idle gesture, but the two Bagarian spacers winced.

    "Look," muttered Captain Julian, staring at his fingers interlaced over his heavy belly. "You can make me the goat if you like, I can't fight you. But it wasn't my approach that screwed the pooch on the first attack. The missiles're bloody useless, it's that simple."

    "I agree that you're not to blame, Julian," Daniel said. He spread his hands over the console's virtual keyboard, making sure that he was aware of its subtle differences both from the Sissie and from the cruiser he'd been commanding these past few weeks. "It's simply a case of, well–"

    He shrunk the display and looked at Julian until the fellow turned and their eyes met.

    "–if this attack fails, there'll be a move to crucify the foreigner who planned it, not so? And if I'm going to be hung for failing, then it's bloody well going to be me who fails."

    In the air before him communication established pulsed in green letters. Daniel brought up his display and said, "Ladouceur, this is Columbine Six. Can you hear me, over?"

    "Of course I can hear you, Columbine Six," Adele's voice rasped from the console's speakers. "If you want to address the squadron, just verbally key them and the relay will work automatically. Otherwise, you'll be speaking through me. As usual. Over."

    "Roger, Signals," Daniel said, grinning as he so often did when dealing with Adele. "Ship, prepare to attack."

    He cleared his throat, then said, "Squadron, this is Squadron Six. Columbine is taking the place of Heartsease in the attack rota. Heartsease, set up your attack to follow that of Columbine. Six out."

    Daniel pressed the Execute button; the High Drive motors fired on preset angles, dropping the Columbine toward the surface of Churchyard. Let's see how long the Alliance garrison continues to laugh….

    Freighters didn't have true attack boards; Daniel'd adapted the pilotry display as if he were setting up a landing. That was basically what he was doing, except that if things worked out it'd be six plasma missiles landing in Hafn Teobald instead of the Columbine herself.

    The vessel began to slide into the atmosphere. The air wasn't thick enough to buffet the hull yet, but Daniel heard the pings of antimatter in the exhaust disintegrating gas molecules in the throats of the motors. He didn't switch out of High Drive yet because he didn't trust the plasma thrusters.

    Daniel expected Captain Julian to complain, but the Bagarian simply sat with a glum expression. He might also stay long in High Drive on his approaches, for the same reason.

    When the pinging increased in frequency to that of water coming to a boil, Daniel shut down the High Drive, waited three seconds on a ballistic course, and finally lit the thrusters. They came on line raggedly, as he'd more or less expected.

    He'd been afraid of a late power blip from one of the motors. If by bad luck only one thruster was making power at the moment when a High Drive motor fired late, the combined impulse could rotate a small vessel like the Columbine on her axis. Better a long freefall than to take that needless risk.

    "Columbine Six, the antiship battery at Hafn Teobald is tracking you," Adele said in a cool tone. "This was the battery's practice with earlier runs as well. None of the Alliance communications indicate an intention to launch this time either." A pause. "Ah, Ladouceur out."

    Daniel smiled. It no longer struck him as odd that in the middle of an attack he was getting reports on the enemy's internal communications.

    The Columbine was well into the first circuit of her attack and was rocking noticeably. The choppiness wasn't as bad as he'd have expected on the Princess Cecile, though the corvette was a somewhat heavier vessel; the outboard-mounted missiles were acted as roll dampers.

    What would Admiral Vocaine say if I recommended that he recruit librarians for signals duty in all RCN vessels?

    Daniel began to laugh. Julian spluttered something which Daniel couldn't make out over the snarl of air jumbling about the rigging. The sound may not have been words at all, of course, just generalized amazement. Woetjans clapped the Bagarian on the shoulder and looked smug.

    They'd completed their second circuit and started into a third, going deeper than the previous runs. The Columbine was slowing, so the roughness wasn't noticeably worse despite the thicker atmosphere.

    "Columbine Six, Command Headquarters has put the missile battery on launch warning but haven't directed them to launch," Adele's voice trembled. "Under current protocols they won't launch unless the target drops beneath three thousand meters. Over."

    "Roger, Signals," Daniel said as his fingers adjusted flow to Thrusters One and Two, raising the bow slightly. "We're not going to come close to that, over."

    The warble in Adele's voice was an artifact of atmospheric distortion on the laser signal. An RCN warship's software would've reshaped the signal into its original form, but the Columbine had nothing so sophisticated. Well, she didn't need it; at least with Cazelet handling commo duties, the freighter's rig was more than adequate.

    "Ship," Daniel said, "prepare to launch. Launching one–"

    The ship bucked into a roll to port as the lower starboard missile separated.

    "Launching two–"

    Two was the upper port missile, thrown clear by the ship's rotation.

    "Three–

    "Four–

    "Five–

    "Six–

    "Ship, we're pulling up!" Daniel cried as he slammed keys to activate the preset course. "RCN forever!"

    His Sissies cheered over the roaring thrusters. Maybe some of the Bagarians did too, though it wasn't the most politic thing to have shouted now that Daniel had time to think about it.

    Bloody hell, they were in the middle of a battle. The six missiles they'd just launched were running straight and true as the Columbine lifted back out of Churchyard's atmosphere.

    "RCN forever!" Daniel repeated. This time he was sure the Bagarian spacers were cheering along with his own.

 

---

 

    Adele noticed the next of the Bagarian ships dropping into the atmosphere while the Columbine was only beginning her ascent. She didn't know whether or not that was a problem, so she said, "Columbine Six, the Heartsease is attacking already. Over."

    "Thank you, Ladouceur," Daniel said, his voice a little strained. He was accelerating hard, of course. "I've got them on my display. I didn't intend such close separations, but I guess it's all right so long as one of us knows what he's doing. Six out."

    The jabbering on the ground wasn't quite as boastfully contented as it'd been an hour earlier, but the Alliance garrison wasn't really worried. The Columbine had driven deeper into the atmosphere than the five runs that'd preceded this one, and now the Heartsease was coming in immediately on the Columbine's heels.

    Neither was a threat on the face of it, given the complete failure of the attack to this point. They were changes, though, and nobody likes to see a change when everything's been going well. Especially when the situation involves other people shooting at you.

    Since the Columbine was out of the battle until it reloaded, the antiship battery shifted its tracking to the Heartsease. The latter was one of the smaller Bagarian vessels and carried only three missiles. It'd been a late arrival, and though it appeared to receive signals, it hadn't emitted any since the seventh-planet rendezvous.

    In past years Adele would've assumed the ship's transmitter had gone out, but she'd seen enough of fringe-world navies to realize that the captain might be in a snit and refusing to respond verbally. That would be insane, of course, but it was by no means impossible.

    The Columbine's six rounds had been tracking smoothly, but the second one launched slowly diverged from the path of the others. There wasn't anything obviously wrong with it; perhaps its gyrocompass had gone awry. Still, if the others–

    The fifth missile dived straight downward, splashing into the ocean half the planetary circumference short of Hafn Teobald. Adele felt a wash of disappointment.

    Daniel had done all he could. Nobody was successful all the time, not even the most brilliant officer in the RCN. There'd be another way to overcome the Alliance forces, there was always another way. Daniel wouldn't stop–they'd none of them stop–until they'd found a way to–

    The Columbine's first missile plunged into the Alliance base, striking the S81 amidships. There was a huge white flash, the friction of steel hitting steel at high velocity. The boat's hull sank, dragging the outriggers with it. An underwater blast emptied the slip momentarily of water and demolished one of the concrete piers.

    The sea gushed back; an outrigger bobbed to the surface. Steam drifted across the harbor on the light breeze, the cloud expanding slowly.

    Adele smiled in self-mockery. She should've given Daniel more credit. Though assuming failure as she'd just done wasn't a problem so long as she went ahead with her tasks regardless. As, of course, she always did.

    High Drive missiles were expected to be on a ballistic course at impact, so they didn't have guidance systems. Despite their relative simplicity, the Bagarian plasma missiles did have sensor-activated controls. They homed on modulated laser signals reflecting from the target. In this case the laser designators were on the Ladouceur, not on the ships launching the missiles.

    Given how crude the missiles were, Adele had wondered if the guidance system could possibly work well enough to matter. Apparently it would.

    The third missile–the second was off-course, thirty miles to the west of Hafn Teobald–had been aimed at the antiship battery. Instead it slammed into the center of the tidal pond behind the site. Reflection from the water must've confused the homing system.

    Adele's smile twitched. The shrieking terror of the battery captain talking to Alliance HQ was worth something, though.

    The fourth missile hit Alliance Headquarters; the center of the sprawling, U-shaped building, unfortunately, since Adele by now knew that the real command center was in a bunker under the north wing. Nonetheless, it was very satisfying to watch the magnified image of the walls shattering in a pall of pulverized concrete. The roof of plastic sheeting fell in and began to burn.

    The final missile was aimed at the Cesare Rossarol; likely one or both of those which failed had targeted the vessel also. The cloud from the S81's ruptured fusion bottle drifted over the destroyer, not concealing it but providing a medium to reflect the laser illuminator. The incoming missile spiked the center of the false bull's-eye and plunged into the far wall of the slip beyond the Rossarol's.

    Chunks of concrete flew in all directions. The destroyer pitched and bucked, but apart from the shaking it must be unharmed.

    The Heartsease was starting her second circuit. Adele's interest in the attack had always been secondary to her duty of listening to intercepted Alliance communications. Now she manually keyed the 20-meter transmitter and shouted, "Heartsease, change direction! They're about to launch at you. Stop your attack now, stop!"

    A plasma missile separated from the Heartsease. The ship rocked and threw off a second missile.

    "Heartsease, pull up or do something! They're going to–"

    The blast of an antiship missile ripped a huge divot from the ground behind the rotating launcher. The projectile itself was a needle glinting in the sunlight; shock diamonds formed in back of its triple nozzles, and far behind swelled a white blanket as the borate exhaust plume absorbed moisture from the air.

    "Pull up, you fools!" Adele screamed. "Dodge, do something!"

    She wasn't sure that the Heartsease would be able to do anything that'd help it survive. Inertia and air resistance might be binding it into a practically fixed course. But the crew ought to try instead of going on with what was effectively a march to the scaffold.

    The third plasma missile dropped away from the Bagarian ship which shuddered as its captain started to pull up at the end of his attack run. The Alliance missile spitted it like an ice pick through an egg. The round depended on velocity, not an explosive warhead; it continued to scream upward into the stratosphere as a thin silver streak.

    The Heartsease flew apart, wrecked by its own speed once it'd been gutted. Chunks of hull and rigging battered each other to fragments that rained toward the surface. The initial impact had probably killed the whole crew; regardless, nothing human–even wearing a hard suit–could survive the hundred-thousand-foot fall.

    Adele's face was grim. She'd tried to warn them, but they hadn't listened. It wasn't her fault, not as anybody else would judge blame.

    Besides, people die in wars. She'd killed a lot of them herself….

    One of the missiles from the Heartsease dropped; its thruster hadn't lighted. The second blew up after thirty seconds of operation. The third curved into a helical course that'd probably be twenty miles in diameter by the time it landed somewhere in the ocean west of Hafn Teobald.

    "Squadron, this is Squadron Six," Daniel said crisply. "Well done, spacers, we've got their measure now. One more attack will do the job, but this time the entire bombardment flotilla will go in together and swamp the defenses. At the same time, the Ladouceur, Independence and DeMarce will approach at low level. The garrison'll panic, I expect, and if they don't we'll burn them out with plasma cannon regardless of what the bombardment missiles–"

    "Like hell we will, you bloody Cinnabar madman!" Captain Seward shouted in fury. "You're just trying to get us all killed so that we can't tell the government that your notion of shooting down at Churchyard was a waste of time. I'm going back to Pelosi, and when I get there I'll call for you to be removed for unfitness. Out!"

    The Stager Brothers had reloaded with plasma missiles from the Sacred Independence while Daniel was attacking with the Columbine. Now it began to accelerate, its High Drive motors stabbing blue-white sparks into vacuum.

    "Stager Six, this is Squadron Six," Daniel said sharply. The Columbine was on what the Plot Position Indicator predicted to be an approach course with the Ladouceur. "Shut down your motors soonest, Captain Stout. We'll be attacking all together after I work out courses, over."

    Stout didn't answer; instead the bead marking Stager Brothers faded off the PPI. Stout had fled from the sidereal universe.

    The other small ships were vanishing also. Adele had seen how long it took their captains to plot a course; it seemed likely that all they were doing was getting out of the immediate vicinity of the Ladouceur's heavy cannon. None of them directly addressed Daniel or the cruiser; they were simply leaving.

    "Admiral Leary," said Hoppler of the Independence. It and the DeMarce were accelerating to gain useful velocity that they could multiply in the Matrix. "Because of a serious leak in my reaction mass tanks, I'm forced to return to Pelosi for repairs. I hope to greet you there soon on your arrival so that we can plan further operations against the common enemy. Hoppler out."

    Sun turned from his console with a look of anguish on his face. "Mistress!" he said to Adele. "They're rats, they're running out on us! Can I ring their bell while they're still this side of the Matrix?"

    "You may not," Adele said sharply. She didn't bother to say that the question was beyond her authority: it wasn't beyond her authority, her real authority at least. There wasn't a Sissie who wouldn't do as Mistress Mundy ordered, Daniel included. "We'll serve them out later, Sun, but not in that fashion."

    She wasn't sure precisely how they'd even the score. Daniel wasn't the sort to send Hogg and Tovera to assassinate the captains who'd ignored his orders and fled. He wouldn't ask Lady Mundy to challenge the cowards to duels, either; but if he did ask that, she'd shoot Hoppler, Seward and the rest of them down with as little compunction as she'd killed a hundred other men and women in the course of her duty.

    It didn't bother her in the least while she was doing it: she saw only a blur in her sight picture. The features didn't appear until late into the darkness, when the dead came to speak with her again.

    The DeMarce faded from the PPI; the Independence was already gone and so were most of the light craft. The Forsyte 14 suddenly reappeared within the display, but that was simply because it hadn't had enough velocity in the sidereal universe to get any distance even with the help of the Matrix. It was accelerating at what appeared to be its maximum rate, now, and it didn't reply to Adele's attempts to raise it on short wave and laser. She didn't imagine that any response the captain made would be a useful one, of course, but she thought she ought to try.

    "Ladouceur, this is Squadron Six," Daniel said. Adele thought he sounded weary, but that could be an artifact of the freighter's commo system. "The Columbine is coming alongside. Mister Liu, have Captain Julian's riggers ready to transfer back aboard, if you will. Six out."

    Adele's algorithms caught the disruption of a ship extracting from the Matrix before the cruiser's own did, but only moments before: the Ladouceur might be old, but she was a warship which'd been constructed and equipped to serve in the foremost navy of the human universe. Software had improved since then, but the real question has always been the skill of the person using the apparatus rather than the apparatus itself.

    "Squadron Six!" Adele said. The Columbine certainly didn't have the sort of electronics Daniel would need to deal with this, and she didn't imagine there'd be time for him to reboard the cruiser. Could she transfer the necessary data to him using the freighter's single-head laser transceiver? "A heavy ship's entered sidereal space three hundred… and six thousand miles from Churchyard. It's not one of our squadron. It's–oh."

    She paused for a moment as she crosschecked the data cascading in from the new arrival; her data were entirely consistent. There hadn't been time yet for an optical identification, but Adele trusted her signals intelligence farther anyway.

    "Daniel," she said, her voice clipped from embarrassment at having given a needless alarm, "the ship is the Zwiedam, a former immigrant transport now owned by the Free State of Skye. I believe this is–"

    "Skye Defender calling Admiral Leary," announced the new arrival over tight-beam microwave. Adele relayed the message to the Columbine over the laser link. "This is Colonel Raymond Chatterjee reporting as ordered, over."

    "Colonel, this is Squadron Six," Daniel replied with a cheerful bounce that hadn't been in his voice a moment before. "I'll be aboard my flagship inside half an hour. We'll shape course to some place we can discuss matters in greater comfort than I suspect you and your troops find in vacuum. Hold what you've got till then, if you don't mind."

    In an even more ebullient tone he added, "I'm very glad of your arrival, Colonel. I think we'll now be able to turn the present bag of lemons into lemonade! Six out."

 

---

 

    A burst of gunfire ripped the morning, thin and echoless in the dry air. Daniel jumped to his feet. Instead of reaching for her pocket pistol, Adele's wands moved rapidly. That startled Daniel until he realized that she'd switched her display to the targeting screen of the Ladouceur's dorsal turret. It gave her a much better vantage point than he had standing.

    "Please, it's all right," said Colonel Chatterjee in obvious concern. "Please, I'm very sorry, Admiral. I told my officers to arrange a marksmanship demonstration while we were on the ground here. I felt that your spacers would be more comfortable if they could trust the infantry that was supporting them. But I should've spoken to you about my plans."

    Daniel forced a smile and settled onto his chair again. "That would've been helpful, yes," he said mildly, "but I'm sure it's good for me to get my heart rate up. Now, as for the inspection party, Chatterjee?"

    "I'm sure we can do that," Chatterjee said. "Yes, I'm sure. I used to be an Alliance officer, you see?"

    He paused on a rising note, lifting an eyebrow in synchrony. He obviously thought the information would be a surprise–and feared it'd be an unwelcome one.

    "Yes, we were aware of that," Daniel said, smiling internally. "We," meaning Adele had learned that and had immediately passed it on because it was potentially important. "But you're a native of Skye. If Governor Radetsky trusts you, that's good enough for me."

    "Ah!" said Chatterjee. "Well, there isn't much uniformity among the planetary militias in Alliance service. If we were Alliance militia, we'd look about the same. It'll just be a matter of making sure the troops the inspectors are allowed to see all have patches saying Maintenon."

    He snorted. "Or at least that they don't say Skye Volunteers. Though I don't think many of the men got around to having patches embroidered on their uniforms before we lifted for Churchyard. We boarded in haste, you see."

    A branch hopper–not the one Daniel had caught–shrieked nearby. A third little creature answered it from much farther away. The high-pitched sound travelled well.

    "Are we to assault the headquarters complex when we've landed?" Chatterjee said, frowning at the image of the fortress again. "I suppose if we have surprise, that should be possible. Surprise and a way to cross the ditch and climb the wall, that is."

    "Yes," said Daniel, "surprise of course. And as for the rest, we'll be landing inside the compound."

    "What?" said Chatterjee. "Leary, Admiral, that is–there's no room! Look at that little boat in the picture. The Defender isn't huge, I don't mean that, but she's far too large to land there."

    "The Westerdam, as we'll be calling her, is 381 feet between perpendiculars," Daniel said. He flexed his spread fingers as he considered the approaching test. "If I keep her centered between the headquarters building and the rampart, I'll have over five hundred feet to settle onto. The 53-foot beam is no problem. Now, it'll be tricky because it's concrete and not water, but I don't foresee serious problems."

    He beamed, a wholesome, cheery expression that he figured was the best way to give a lie the gloss of truth. The combination of angles and hard verticals would reflect the transport's exhaust in unpredictable fashions. The Ladouceur's landing simulation program didn't have software to mimic such terrain: it was too far beyond what the designers had imagined anyone would want to do.

    Granted, missile boats and couriers obviously managed it, but the task was going to be an order of magnitude more difficult for a vessel the size of the, well, Skye Defender. On the other hand–

    Daniel's smile became completely real.

    On the other hand, he figured he was an order of magnitude better than the captains of minor elements of an Alliance cluster command.

    "Ah, one thing that I've only implied, Colonel," he said. "I'll be taking charge of the Skye Defender myself. I've landed ships her size on dry ground, of course."

    Daniel'd landed one ship that size on dry ground, and that'd been a controlled crash which wrote off the vessel. This had to look like a real landing, not the vertical assault it really was, if it had a prayer of succeeding. Well, he'd manage it.

    Chatterjee shook his head in amazement, but he was grinning broadly. "All the stories we heard were true then, Admiral," he said. "We'll do as you wish, of course; what else can we do when so famed an officer leads?"

    His expression became speculative. "And you will be leading, of course?" Chatterjee said. "You will be putting your life on the line with ours?"

    "Not only my life, Colonel," Daniel said, nodding to Adele, "but the life of the finest signals officer in the RCN. I assure you that I wouldn't be risking Officer Mundy if I weren't confident of success."

    Adele looked at him without expression; Daniel laughed to make a joke out of it. It wasn't a joke, not really. All he was really confident of was that they wouldn't have a prayer of succeeding if Adele weren't in the ship that made the landing.

    "So," he said "If you'll call your officers together in half an hour in the entry hold of the Ladouceur, I'll go over the detailed assignments for the assault."

    "Very good," said Chatterjee, rising. "A bold plan is the best plan, I agree."

    He bowed and strode off to where the target practice was taking place. The rattle of shots and the howl of ricochets from stone had been continuous since they began.

    "Well, Adele," Daniel said quietly. "What do you think?"

    "I think that if I can't take control of the fire control computer for the plasma cannon on the wall," Adele said, "that they'll destroy us as soon as they realize we're hostile. I'll try to accomplish that."

    "Yes," said Daniel. "I expected that you would."

    A branch hopper called very close to them. Daniel jerked his head around, but he wasn't able to pinpoint the creature this time.

    "I think they're more active than they'd usually be," he said, "because of our breath. Five hundred people exhaling in a close compass like this is going to raise the humidity a great deal in this climate. I think it's a good omen, don't you?"

    "I'll search under 'Omens, finger-sized animals on Dansant,' shall I?" said Adele with a deadpan expression. "But I'll be frank, I don't believe I'm going to be able to support your belief there."

    She didn't laugh with him, but her smile was as broad as he'd seen it in a long time.

 

---

 

---

 

En route to Conyers

    Adele heard the voices pausing outside her room. When she realized one of those speaking was Woetjans, she noticed where her left hand was. Grimacing in self-disgust, she removed it and smoothed the pocket before calling, "Yes? Come in."

    The Zwiedam had carried six hundred immigrants at a time on long voyages. Adele couldn't imagine where they'd all fitted, but regardless there was plenty of room for half that number of the soldiers and armed spacers who'd make up the assault force.

    Adele and the other officers had private  rooms–of a sort. What'd been a barracks for fifty in five-high hammock towers had been broken up into ceilingless compartments made from sail fabric stretched on tubing. The fabric was perfectly opaque: when energized, it reflected even Casimir radiation. It didn't do anything about sound, though, so the voices, music, dice games, and snoring from the other nine cubicles came through unhindered.

    The room was noisy, dank, and adorned only by chipping paint. At that, it was better than most of the places where Adele had roomed during the fifteen years between when her family was massacred and her joining the RCN. She didn't care much about her physical surroundings anyway.

    Woetjans opened the door panel by turning the double pivot that served as a latch. Instead of entering, she remained in the corridor with a Bagarian spacer whom Adele didn't know by name.

    Tovera and Rene Cazelet stood just behind the spacers. They had the cubicles to either side of Adele's, and they appeared to've dropped whatever they were doing to join the party.

    "Ramage found something back on Dansant, mistress," the bosun said. "I told him we needed to bring it to you because you'd know what it was."

    She nudged Ramage. "Go on, show it to her, buddy," she said. "You don't have to be scared. We're on her side. Right, mistress?"

    "I usually don't shoot people for asking me questions, Woetjans," Adele said dryly. "Even when they're not shipmates."

    She took the little pyramid which Ramage held out to her. It was about an inch high from any base to its apex and remarkably heavy for its size. There were carvings on all four faces, though Adele couldn't tell the detail in this light. She moved it above the data unit and focused the display into a bar of white light.

    Adele used to think that the spacers she served with considered her a monster; the thought had disturbed her. After a time she realized that people who'd just heard the stories might think she was a monster, but to the Sissies themselves she was a guard dog: very dangerous, but their dog.

    That didn't bother her as much. She basically agreed with the assessment.

    "It was where we were shooting, mistress," Ramage said. She'd heard the Bagarians call him Andy. "The Skyes'd painted targets on rocks. They'd shoot and we'd shoot, and after the paint'd been blasted off we'd go paint 'em back again. I was helping paint, you know, and I saw this so I picked it up."

    "He thought it was a slug, you see, stuck in the rock," Woetjans said. "But we scraped the rock away and it wasn't."

    "Anyway, it was too big," Ramage said. He'd loosened up a good deal in the course of this short conversation.
            "No, it's not a bullet," Adele said, hefting the pyramid in her palm. It was as dense as the osmium and iridium projectiles which heavy impellers shot, though. Her little pocket pistol fired ceramic pellets which lost most of their velocity in the first fifty yards.

    Each face of the pyramid had an image; the edges were sharp, apparently carved instead of being cast. The base was marked with a symbol, a figure-8 or perhaps an analemma, beside two slanted diagonals. It meant nothing to Adele or to her personal data unit.

    The other three facets showed heads in left profile. One was birdlike, though the beak was vestigial; the next was clearly reptilian, but the jaw was shorter than that of any reptile Adele had seen and the forehead bulged almost like a man's; and the third was a slope-browed man, or at least something manlike.

    Daniel will be interested in this.

    "Where'd it come from, mistress?" Woetjans asked.

    Adele stood, closed her data unit, and handed the pyramid back to Ramage. She'd started to put it in her pocket, but she realized the spacers would think she was appropriating it. They'd accept that, of course: she was Lady Adele Mundy, the Captain's friend, and they were the dirt beneath her feet.

    They thought that; she did not. She winced to imagine reinforcing their belief by accident.

    "I'm not sure we'll be able to tell, Woetjans," Adele said, "but come with me to the Medicomp and we'll analyze the thing in more detail than we can here."

    She strode down the corridor between fabric cubicles and then through the open hatch to C Deck's central passage. In warships the automated diagnosis and care facility was usually on A Deck, but the builders of this immigrant ship placed it in the middle of the three decks given over to barracks. It was within fifty yards of Adele's compartment.

    No one was in the Medicomp at the moment, so Adele simply used the cabinet itself instead of everting one of the arms. When there were many to treat at the same time, the unit did so externally. After the assault on Mandlefarne Island, Adele had been one of half a dozen casualties in the corridor of the Princess Cecile.

    She could easily have died there; but she hadn't, so she was here to answer questions for Woetjans and Ramage. The spacers were pleased that she'd lived, and at the moment Adele supposed that she was glad also.

    "The object, please," Adele said, but Ramage was already holding it out to her. The cylinder would hold a large human lying flat. She set the pyramid in the center and closed the cabinet again.

    "Why, that's brilliant, Adele!" Cazelet said as he watched her program the Medicomp. "I never would've thought of that. Of course, it has full-spectrum analysis capability, but I just considered it a, well, a Medicomp."

    "One gets used to field expedients in the RCN," Adele said, smiling faintly. "For example, a large wrench makes a very good club. Doesn't it, Woetjans?"

    "Yes, ma'am," said the bosun. "Though I prefer a length of high-pressure tubing."

 

---

 

    Adele scrolled the readout, using the Medicomp's vernier control. She hadn't coupled her personal data unit to it, and doing so now would be more effort than it was worth. The integral controls and menus were clear and simple, as befitted equipment intended for use by common spacers who might themselves be injured.

    "It's pure platinum," Adele said. "Chemically pure, that is; it'd have to have been refined to achieve that degree of purity. And the angles are all within microns of 120 degrees, which also means it wasn't bashed into shape by a savage with a rock."

    Not that she'd imagined it had been. She wasn't sure of the temperature required to smelt platinum, but–

    Adele settled cross-legged on the deck and brought out her data unit. A few twitches with the wands gave her the figure: 3164.3 degrees. No, not a temperature you got from a wood fire, even with three of your cousins blowing on it through cane tubes.

    "Ah, Mistress Mundy?" Rene said, carefully circumspect. He'd embarrassed himself by blurting "Adele" a moment ago in front of the spacers. "If the object was really set in the limestone outcrop rather than dirt–"

    "Hey, it was rock!" Woetjans said. "You think I don't know what rock is, kid? When Ramage here showed me what was sticking out, I cracked it loose with my impeller's butt that I'd been shooting."

    "Yes, Chief Woetjans," Cazelet, stiffening his back and clipping his syllables slightly into an upper-class Pleasaunce accent. "If it was limestone, as I said, then it should be possible to use radiation dating on the particles still caught in the grooves of the carving. Should it not?"

    "Can one carbon date stone?" Adele said, but she was already typing the commands into the Medicomp's keyboard.

    "Limestone's carbonate rock formed by living creatures," Cazelet said. "In the sea. Use the ratio of oxygen isotopes."

    "If there was a sea there, it was the gods' own time ago," said Ramage with a puzzled frown. "I never been no place so dry as that."

    "Yes, it was a long time ago," Adele said, staring impassively at the readout. Her fingers typed. "Sixty-two thousand years before present, plus or minus seven thousand. That seems an excessive range of error, but I don't suppose it matters from our viewpoint."

    "Mistress, that must be wrong," Rene said. "Try another facet. The sample must be contaminated."

    "I don't see how it can be correct either," said Adele, intent on her work. "And I am sampling another side, of course. But I'm less sure than you are that it has to be wrong."

    She cleared her throat. "This time it's reading sixty-two thousand, plus or minus five point five," she added.

    Adele opened the cabinet and removed the little pyramid. After bouncing it twice in her palm, she handed it to Ramage again.

    "I think Commander Leary would like to see this," she said. "Perhaps he'll be able to offer a better explanation than I can."

    "Mistress?" said Woetjans. A frown furrowed her brow like a freshly-turned field. "There weren't people that far back, was there? I mean, sixty-odd thousand years?"

    Adele reached for her data unit. Before she could call up an answer, Cazelet said, "There were people of a sort, Bosun, but they weren't making art from platinum. And they weren't here."

    "There's no reason to assume humans created this little thing anyway," Adele pointed out. "Just that someone who'd seen humans did it."

    Cazelet looked at Adele and said harshly, "Mistress, for this to be true would require a star-travelling race sixty thousand years ago. There's no evidence of that!"

    Adele gestured toward the pyramid in Ramage's hand. "No previous evidence that you'd seen, you mean, Rene," she said with a faint smile. "I've seen some odd things since I began travelling widely."

    She was always puzzled to learn that the most avowedly skeptical people took things on faith. Adele believed data, but only until better data appeared; as for analyses and explanations, they were no better than the intellect of the person making them. Rene's certainty was a matter of blind faith.

    "Do you mean there was?" Rene said, raising his voice without intending to. "That there was a race that was sailing the stars when human beings thought fire was high technology?"

    "I mean that Ramage found a platinum pyramid on Dansant," Adele said calmly. She let a slow smile spread a little wider than was normal for her.  "I won't speculate about it or about most things; I don't care for the paths my mind sometimes takes when I speculate."

    "Guess I'll show this to Six," Ramage decided aloud. "That all right, Chief?"

    Woetjans nodded without expression.

    "He might want to buy it, d'ye think, mistress?" Ramage said. Before she could nod agreement, he added, "But you know, I might give it to him anyways.  Tell the truth, it makes me feel kinda funny."

    "Yes," said Rene Cazelet, "I understand perfectly, spacer."

    He looked at Adele, shook his head, and said, "What does it mean, mistress?"

    "It means we were on Dansant and Ramage found a platinum pyramid," Adele repeated. "If you mean that question in a broader sense–"

    She smiled again.

    "–I'm really the wrong person to discuss the meaning of life, Master Cazelet. Because you see, I don't think life has any meaning."

    After a pause Adele added, "Though Commander Leary would disagree, I suspect. And anyone who's served with Commander Leary will tell you that he's generally right."