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Chapter Thirty-three

Daniel whistled "Been on the Job Too Long" as he computed tracks for the eighteen missiles remaining aboard the Princess Cecile. It was quite a cheerful tune, though the words were another matter. That was true of a lot of catchy songs, come to think.

When the women all heard that King Brady was dead—  

The Princess Cecile would pass through the Alliance squadron at high velocity. That wouldn't affect the plasma cannon, of course, except to minimize the corvette's exposure to the bolts, but it did mean that Alliance missiles would have a long time catching up even at twelve-gee accelerations.

They went back home and they dressed in red.  

The converse was that the Sissie's own missiles, save for the pair already loaded in the tubes, would be fighting a great deal of negative inertia as they struggled back toward their target. Der Grosser Karl would be able to avoid them easily.

All Daniel's missiles were aimed at the battleship: if Der Grosser Karl were damaged, the powerful remainder of the squadron would be more concerned with defending the cripple than in chasing down Commodore Pettin's force. A big "if," of course.

They come slippin' and aslidin' up and down the street—  

Light flickered as the Princess Cecile shifted onto the final leg of her approach. Daniel's course calculation had taken fifteen minutes, three times as long as so short a voyage would require, because he'd added a fourth parameter to the mix.

Usually an attack was made with a minimum of rig aloft so that the vessel could maneuver on High Drive without damaging its antennas. This time Daniel wanted every possible—every surviving—mast raised to its full height and all sails spread. That was a strikingly inefficient way to navigate the Matrix; but in a portion of normal space bathed with the point-blank output of eight-inch plasma cannon, it was the corvette's only hope of survival.

In their old Mother Hubbards and their stocking feet!  

Daniel paused in his calculations—for rounds fifteen and sixteen, and if the Sissie survived to launch them she and her crew would be very fortunate indeed—to watch the sail schematic change to reflect the new rig. Starboard Three and Four didn't budge at the thrust of the jacks. Though undamaged at the quick glance which alone was possible after the initial attack, a splash of plasma had welded their base hinges.

Woetjans must have expected that, because at least six mauls slammed rhythmically into the masts within seconds of the jam. Both began to lift. S3 continued normally, but the pump pressure driving S4 flatlined when the antenna had only elevated a few degrees. A hydraulic line—scored by plasma, fractured by an injudicious hammerblow, or simply filled with the cussed determination of machines to fail—had broken.

Brady, Brady, Brady, don't you know you done wrong?  

The mast resumed its rise, again within seconds of the initial failure. The bosun must already have rigged tackle to blocks at the head of adjacent, previously extended, masts.

Daniel felt a rush of affection. By God! he wasn't going to let Woetjans throw her life away. Not even if saving her required a sincerely offered threat to blow her head off if she didn't obey.

Antenna Starboard 4 locked into place and, without further hesitation, unfurled its suit of sails. The Princess Cecile was wearing nearly eighty percent of her rig, an unusual event made more remarkable by the battle damage that alone prevented the figure being even higher.

Atoms stripped of electrons and accelerated by repulsion up the bore of a plasma cannon had velocities little short of light speed, but negligible mass. Their ravening touch would destroy the first layer of any matter they collided with, but they wouldn't penetrate. Damage beyond the target's outer layer was a result of transmitted impact—which in the case of sail fabric was almost zero.

After the battleship's initial volley had removed the sails, further bolts would scour the hull. At point-blank range, fluxes intended to change the course of missiles approaching at .6 C would make short work of a corvette.

You bust into my bar when the game was on . . .  

The astrogation computer changed the sails' potentials as programmed; Daniel checked the results against the plan and his instinct. All was well.

He grinned. If that was the phrase to use under the circumstances.

"Three minutes to reentry to normal space!" Dorst said.

The riggers, their job completed, were clanging back within the Sissie's hull. The inner airlock opened outside the bridge. One figure stepped through, Lt. Mon lifting off the helmet of his rigging suit. He closed the hatch behind him.

You sprung my latch and you broke my door . . .  

Catching Daniel's eye, Mon shouted, "Hogg's staying in the lock with Woetjans. Says it's as good a place as the next, he figures."

Daniel thought of his short, dumpy servant and the rangy bosun. Under the circumstances the two were an ideal pair: they understood one another perfectly. Missed communications had killed more people than ever malice dreamed of doing.

"Daniel?" Adele said. She'd waited until she saw his attention drawn away from the calculations on his display. "When we return to normal space, I intend to direct the other ships, the escort ships? Direct them to return to Tanais in the name of Admiral Chastelaine. I doubt they'll obey, but I thought it might confuse them. Is that all right?"

Daniel opened a window in his holographic display so that he could meet Adele's eyes without a fog of light between them. She looked worried, concerned about having overstepped her proper authority.

"Great heavens, yes!" Daniel said. "But won't they—oh, I see. You will be sending it in the proper Alliance code."

Adele smiled faintly. "Yes, that's my greatest question," she said. "Less than half the flagship's communications are encrypted properly, so it might be more believable if I introduced errors in my transmissions. Doing that offended my sense of rightness, however, so unless you require me to . . . ?"

"Quite all right," Daniel said. "I'd hate for your last act in this life to be one you found to smack of impropriety."

"One minute to reentry to normal space," announced Mon. "Prepare for action."

"What do you mean, prepare for action?" shouted someone—shouted Delos Vaughn coming up the corridor toward the bridge. The helmet of his emergency suit was hinged open, bouncing on his chest. "We've escaped, I saw us escape! We're safe now!"

There was a display in the wardroom. Tovera must have set it to receive real-time data during the attack. She'd have known how, after all.

Daniel frowned. He'd ordered Hogg to release the president, but it hadn't occurred to him that Vaughn would then choose to interfere with the business of war.

He noted with further irritation that Tovera walked just behind Vaughn. Her smile could easily be described as mocking, though one had to admit that Tovera's expressions were pretty much a blank slate for the viewer to color with emotion.

"Mister Vaughn—" Daniel began.

Vaughn strode onto the bridge, either oblivious of Daniel's orders or in defiance of them. He said, "I won't let you kill us all!"

"Secure the civilian!" Daniel said.

He actually didn't see Tovera's hand move, gripping Vaughn by the left ear and twisting. Vaughn screamed, then stopped as he, turning his head to reduce the pain of his ear, brought his right eye into contact with the muzzle of Tovera's submachine gun.

They backed off the bridge. Adele nodded to Daniel and put her pistol away.

"Reentry into—"

Der Grosser Karl, broadside and apparently huge as a planet, filled the real-time display. Her sails were ragged, torn both by the missiles and by gouts of plasma from her own cannon. She was of the latest Alliance design, mounting thirty-two 21cm plasma cannon in quadruple turrets.

Thump! First missile away.

Hellfire vaporized the Princess Cecile's sails and antennas, dressing her in a glowing ball of her own rig. Plasma continued to rip from at least eight yawning muzzles, but the vapor of destruction protected the corvette from worse.

Thump!  

The Princess Cecile yawed with a world-filling crash. Her hull whipped, frames warping and plates in the double hull gaping apart. Cabin pressure dropped and Daniel reflexively closed his faceshield.

There hadn't been enough time for the battleship to plot trajectories for her own missiles, but at such short range the heavy cannon had virtually the impact of solid projectiles. As the corvette punched clear of the expanding cloud, one bolt or possibly two had struck her well forward on the underside.

The first missile entered Der Grosser Karl amidships, like a pin through the thorax of a fat-bodied butterfly with tattered wings. Gas puffed from the point of impact; sparkling fire exploded where the remains of the missile, liquescent from friction, tore its exit. A gun turret, almost complete, lifted from the hull. Three of the heavy iridium gun-tubes spun away on separate trajectories.

Daniel's display flared, but the volley that overloaded the hull sensors didn't actually strike the corvette. Close doesn't count—

The Princess Cecile's second missile clipped the battleship's stern and converted itself and a thousand tonnes of its target into white fire. The corvette had exited the Matrix at .1 C; her missiles added that to the kinetic energy of their own acceleration when they struck.

The Princess Cecile was through the squadron, dismasted and with half her High Drive nozzles unserviceable. She was going nearly directly away from Der Grosser Karl and should have been an easy, low-deflection, target for the battleship's cannon.

Der Grosser Karl had stopped firing.

And now you're lyin' dead on my barroom floor!  

Daniel switched his display to the Plot Position Indicator. The Princess Cecile was already off her programmed course. A glance at the systems sidebar showed why: red dots for nine of the sixteen High Drive nozzles, red circles for three more. The four nozzles which the sleet of ions had spared weren't sufficient to warp the corvette around the curve of Getica and out of line with Der Grosser Karl.

The rumbling of missiles within the corvette's belly had stopped. Daniel knew unconsciously there was something wrong. His own mind hadn't put a cause to it till a heartbeat later when Betts leaped up from his console and shouted over the general channel, "The fucking outer doors are fucking welded shut! All fucking missile personnel to the fucking tubes! We'll draw the fucking ready rounds and blow the fucking doors open!"

The Chief Missileer disappeared down the forward companionway. His lips were still moving, but his words no longer filled the general channel. Either he'd switched his helmet to his unit push or—more likely—Adele had switched it for him.

Either way, both Missiles and Signals were in good shape; at any rate, as good as human effort could make them. As for the rig . . .

The battleship hadn't resumed firing, and the remainder of the Alliance squadron was too distant for plasma weapons to be a serious threat. There was still risk; but then, there was always risk.

"Riggers topside!" Daniel ordered. "Woetjans, do what you can—I'm not expecting much. Break. Engineering, send as many techs topside as you can spare. I want the three nozzles with minor damage repaired soonest, and if it's possible to replace any of the others, that too. Captain out!"

Daniel doubted replacement would be possible. The rosette of nozzles must have taken a direct hit. Pasternak had shown himself to be a good man in milder conditions; now he'd have a chance to test his mettle against battle damage.

Sun was twisted around in his chair, staring at Daniel in anguish. He said on the command channel, "Sir, I could've raped her sails, raped them! I can still hurt her bad, sir."

Daniel looked at his gunner. "Could you have done Der Grosser Karl a tenth the harm she did herself trying to claw us? You know you couldn't. And I know that if we need your cannon, I won't want their bores shot out from playing games."

More gently Daniel added, "We've almost got maneuvering way, Sun. Luck and your guns are the only things that're going to keep us alive for the next hour."

Sun bit his lip and nodded. "Sir," he muttered, turning back to his console.

There was nothing fatal about Der Grosser Karl's injuries, though she'd be a year in dock repairing them or Daniel hadn't learned anything in the time he'd spent hanging around the premises of Bergen and Associates. He understood why the battleship's crew was wholly concerned with its own problems instead of acting to finish off the crippled corvette. What he didn't understand was why Chastelaine—or the acting squadron commander if Chastelaine was a casualty—hadn't detailed a pair of destroyers to that task.

Unless—

Daniel shrank the scale of his PPI to encompass a sphere nearly a million miles in diameter. There should have been six ships in that volume besides the central pip of the Princess Cecile herself. Instead there were nine: the Alliance squadron, and three vessels more at the outer edge of the coverage area. They had their identification transponders switched off, but Daniel knew who they were as surely as the Alliance commander must.

Commodore Pettin hadn't fled in the breathing space the Princess Cecile had provided him. In the best tradition of the RCN, he was coming to fight.

Adele kept her face expressionless as she viewed the corvette's outer hull through imagery provided by Woetjans's suit. If she hadn't known better she'd have guessed she was looking at a nickel-iron asteroid, pitted and half-melted by a pass through the upper reaches of an atmosphere.

The internal air pressure was beginning to rise. Damage crews filled spaces with quick-setting foam, blocking leaks through torn plates and ruptured seams. It wasn't up to eight pounds yet, and Adele had been repeatedly warned during drills that there could still be catastrophic hull failure at this stage of the proceedings.

She unlatched her helmet anyway. It constricted her mind, and that was far more worrisome than the chance of death.

"They're launching!" Sun said. He'd opened his helmet also; his voice was squeaky but clear to Adele in the next station. "Look at those bastards! Well, we didn't get their fire control, that's for sure!"

The Alliance ships exchanged course data on what they assumed were secure links. Adele intercepted and decrypted the signals, then forwarded them to Daniel. Presumably he was doing whatever could be done with it, his face intent as he typed furiously.

Voice communications within the Alliance squadron were properly Adele's own area of responsibility. They passed through her ears and she filtered them for content. Occasionally she summarized them for Daniel and the Battle Direction Center.

Admiral Chastelaine hadn't panicked, but he was in a fury—an equally disruptive state of affairs in respect to the good governance of his squadron. He'd announced he was proceeding by gig to the Yorck, the heavy cruiser, to transfer his flag; had cancelled that order and summoned a destroyer to carry him from the damaged battleship to the Yorck; and had finally, at least for now, determined to direct the battle from aboard Der Grosser Karl. Adele had no idea of what was going on inside the Alliance vessels, but she very much doubted that the moral atmosphere resembled the ordered enthusiasm aboard the Princess Cecile.

Adele's ears were given over to duty, but her eyes were her own. She echoed Sun's display in a corner of hers, replacing the wasteland of the corvette's hull.

At once she felt her spirits lift—not for what she saw, but because she no longer viewed the Princess Cecile's mutilated exterior. Adele wasn't the sort of sentimentalist—the sort of fool!—who imagined machines have life, let alone personalities. Even so, there are tools which serve their users so well that it could be reasonable to feel regret when they break.

Sun's attack screen looked similar to Daniel's PPI, save that it showed missiles as colored tracks rather than points. The computed courses were orange, with the portions already traversed in scarlet.

Adele understood the gunner's amazement. Der Grosser Karl had launched twenty-four missiles, more than the corvette's capacity at full load; and as Adele watched, another dozen rippled from the battleship's tubes.

"Adele!" Daniel snapped as his eyes and hands continued their separate work. "Can you transmit the Alliance courses to Commodore Pettin. Soonest!"

"Yes, Daniel," Adele said mildly. "I've been doing that."

She didn't add, "Of course." This was no time to play foolish games.

There were proper times for punctilio, of course. She was a Mundy of Chatsworth and had no intention of brooking a deliberate insult; but she'd have been equally curt with Daniel if she needed something from him and failure would be the price of delay.

Daniel opened his helmet. Adele suspected the delay had been because he was busy, not that thin air or the risk concerned him. Internal pressure had risen to over ten psi, enough that Adele's lungs no longer felt as though they couldn't fill.

"Admiral Chastelaine knows he's not very maneuverable," Daniel said. He spoke conversationally, but Adele noticed that his eyes were on the data, not her face. "He's using his magazines to do what his High Drive can't, keep our ships away from Der Grosser Karl while the rest of his squadron destroys them."

He smiled brilliantly and met Adele's eyes for an instant. "And as your intercepts show, he's mad enough to chew rocks."

The three Cinnabar vessels—points undifferentiated in size at this range—vanished from the display a few seconds apart. Instead of lowering their antennas to maneuver in normal space, they'd reentered the Matrix.

The Princess Cecile's missiles began to move on their trackways. A metallic screech quivered through the ship, bringing a violent curse from Sun. Adele had no idea of whether or not the sound had anything to do with the missiles.

Daniel brought up real-time imagery of the Alliance ships. Adele hesitated a moment, then echoed the vessels in a line across the top of her display.

When the Princess Cecile appeared, Admiral Chastelaine had been preparing to enter the Matrix on a short voyage from Getica to Strymon. Now the Yorck and two of the destroyers were taking down all their antennas to ready themselves for battle, and the remaining pair of destroyers were lowering all but the rings at their far bow and stern.

"R Class destroyers," Daniel said in a tone of professional approval. "Quite good ships. Their ordinary magazine capacity's sixty rounds."

"They're the Ihn and Steinbrinck," Adele said, expanding a sidebar to check the names. "The other two are the Koellner and Giese; and yes, they reported magazines full at sixty missiles each."

The Alliance ships were reforming in a hollow globe thirty thousand miles in diameter. Each vessel was under power at a constant one-gee acceleration. The course schematic made it look as though they were in orbit, but in fact they circled a point in empty space. Tanais's orbital motion was carrying the moon slowly away from the squadron, though the ships were already beyond range of support by the base defenses when the Princess Cecile attacked.

"Chastelaine's marking time, waiting to see what the RCN's going to do," Daniel said. "He'll react then—you see that he's ready to respond either to an attack or to dog us with two destroyers until the rest of the squadron can rejoin if Pettin tries to run. Though . . ."

He pursed his lips judiciously, peering at the flagship's image.

"I don't think the admiral would either leave his battleship without escort or engage with his force divided," he said. "With Der Grosser Karl in its present condition, his squadron would have a very long chase to run down even a crock like the Winckelmann. But I really doubt that question's going to arise, because Commodore Pettin will—"

Three ships coalesced out of the Matrix, again within seconds of one another. They were driving toward the Alliance squadron, perpendicular to the plane of the Strymon system. Daniel had programmed his display to include them without further input: the Winckelmann, Active, and Petty, broadside to their axis of movement so that their missile tubes amidships were clear. They began lowering their antennas at the moment they reappeared in normal space.

The ships were glossy with false precision. The Princess Cecile's software was integrating real-time images with archival files to refine views of vessels which were more than 200,000 miles from the corvette.

Slivers separated from first the Winckelmann, then the two destroyers. They were launching missiles.

"Look what he's done!" Daniel said. "Look, look where the Yorck is, Adele! That's your doing, letting the commodore plan his attack like this!"

Adele stared at the display. She didn't understand. She wasn't used to thinking spatially, so the fact that the Alliance heavy cruiser was near the axis of the Cinnabar squadron's motion didn't mean anything to her. Some vessel was bound to be, after all.

Alliance ships were launching missiles also; some seconds behind the attackers but in greater numbers regardless. Der Grosser Karl alone spasmed a dozen, then a second dozen from her dorsal and ventral batteries respectively. Adele knew from the transmitted manifest that there were hundreds more rounds available behind a first salvo that by itself outdid the total output of Commodore Pettin's force.

Beside Adele, Sun shrieked in delight; both Mon and Vesey were crowing happily over the command channel. "Daniel, I don't see!" she said.

The ships were maneuvering, though their initial velocities—particularly those of the RCN vessels—were much higher than the increments added or subtracted by their High Drives. Missile tracks spread across the display like wisps of colored hair, the orange predictions changing to red as the seconds passed.

Daniel hammered keys, adding the ships' projected courses to the display. "Oh," said Adele in sudden understanding. "Oh!"

The Yorck was sailing into the junction of not only the RCN missiles but those from Der Grosser Karl's capacious magazines. Commodore Pettin had maneuvered the Alliance heavy cruiser into an inferno of friendly fire.

The Princess Cecile's hull rang, a sound as sharp as that of the riggers' mauls but much louder. Moments later a second blow made the frames clang.

"Bridge, that's Tube Alpha clear!" Betts's breathless voice announced. The low-frequency grumble of missiles moving started again. "She'll be reloaded in a minute thirty, and by the Lord we'll have Beta ready in five minutes more! Missiles out!"

Daniel's jubilant face suddenly shed all expression. He began again to type with grim determination.

"Captain!" Lt. Mon reported from the Battle Direction Center. "The battleship just launched a round at us. Over."

Adele frowned. What does one missile matter against the scores they've already fired? 

She looked at the display and found it suddenly clear. The geometry was simple enough that even she could see the relationships.

The Princess Cecile was heading directly away from the battleship it had slashed at point-blank range. By now the distance was very great due to the velocity the corvette had built up in the Matrix, but the two ships' proper motion was nearly zero. The computed track of the missile and the corvette's projected course were identical.

And, with the damage to her High Drive, there was virtually nothing the Princess Cecile could do to change that relationship.

Pasternak was topside. Many chief engineers would have denied that it was their duty to clamber about the hull of a ship while it was under weigh; they weren't riggers. If the thrusters or High Drive nozzles needed looking after, why then there were technicians to take the risk of drifting toward infinity while the ship accelerated away from them.

If Pasternak had felt that way, he'd have been looking for a different berth at the end of this voyage, and he wouldn't much like the character Daniel offered when discussing him with other captains.

Daniel looked again at his course calculations. Mind, the Princess Cecile's present voyage might end very abruptly and under such conditions that none of her crew need worry about the future. Still, there was hope.

"Mister Pasternak?" Daniel said. Had the Chief Engineer thought to fit his suit with a radio before he went topside? Pray God he had, though needs must Daniel would use Hogg or a rigger to relay his message. "What's the status of the damaged nozzles? Captain over."

"Sir, we're just finishing Number Five," Pasternak came back instantly. "The sheathing—" the electromagnetic tape that kept the stream of antimatter centered until it reached the nozzle to interact with the spray of normal matter "—burned through but the tube and nozzle were all right. The feeds to Ten and Twelve are fine, but they shouldn't be run till the nozzles're replaced. Fifteen minutes apiece if we're lucky, but if the ion stream welded the fittings we'll have to cut them loose. I can't promise much then. Over."

Daniel looked at his calculations. With three more nozzles on line, just possibly . . .

Aloud he said, "Pasternak, finish up on Five soonest and bring your crew aboard. Break. Woetjans, we'll be increasing thrust to one point six gee as soon as engineering has Nozzle Five ready. Nozzles Ten and Twelve may fail at any moment, so watch yourself around Frame Sixty."

Daniel stared at his display for a moment, then added, "Woetjans? I recommend you bring your crews aboard now, unless you're convinced their work over the next five minutes is crucial. It's possible that we'll be maneuvering violently. Over."

"Roger," Woetjans said. There was physical strain in her voice. Daniel suspected the bosun was bracing herself with the grip of one hand and using the other to put as much force on the end of a come-along as three ordinary crewmen could've managed. "You handle the bloody course, we'll handle the bloody rig. Out!"

"Task accomplished, coming aboard," Pasternak said crisply. "Engineering out."

Daniel cut in the additional High Drive nozzles. The icons for Ten and Twelve went solid green under dint of Daniel's overriding command, but they pulsed to show the computer's displeasure.

Daniel smiled faintly. They'd never build a computer that could fight battles successfully: to win, sometimes you had to do things that made no logical sense. You had to be willing to die as well, but an RCN officer was just as willing to die as any machine was.

On the attack screen, three Alliance missile tracks intersected that of the Petty. The destroyer was braking at three gravities, thrust that was certain to ripple plates and start seams. The scale was too small for certainty: to the last Daniel was able to hope that what looked like a hit was in fact a narrow miss.

The Petty's image deformed. A ball of gas puffed around the destroyer like blood pooling beneath a corpse. The fusion bottle failed then, devouring everything astern of the blast wall in a white flash. Debris from the bow section shotgunned away. Some of the fragments might be suited crewmen, but there was no possibility of them being rescued.

"Sir!" Mon said urgently. "We're accelerating on our previous course. I've figured thrust to produce the greatest possible tangent. Shall I take the conn?"

"Negative, negative!" Daniel said. "Mr. Mon, I'll determine the Sissie's course!"

He checked his display to make sure that he hadn't handed off control to the BDC at some past moment and failed to retrieve it. It was absolutely critical that the course remain exactly as he'd set it.

Even if he'd guessed wrong. A ship could have only one captain, and Daniel Leary was the Princess Cecile's at present.

One of the stern airlocks cycled with a hesitation noticeable to a spacer experienced in the Princess Cecile's patterns. The inner valve had warped, though it must still be sealing adequately or Pasternak's crew wouldn't have been able to use the lock without authorization from the command console.

An RCN missile hit the Yorck forward. Three seconds later, a missile from Der Grosser Karl spitted the Alliance heavy cruiser at virtually the same frame but from starboard instead of the port side.

The Yorck continued on its previous course. A bubble of atmosphere surrounded the vessel, expanding slowly. That the cruiser stayed centered in the ball of gas showed that its High Drive had shut down: until the double impact, the Yorck had been braking hard in a desperate attempt to avoid the kill zone.

The Winckelmann was so distant from the Alliance battleship that missiles the ships launched at one another burned all their fuel, then continued on ballistic courses. At burnout the missile separated into four segments, closely spaced but nonetheless increasing the coverage area considerably. Though the difference didn't show at the scale of Daniel's display, he knew that the missiles about to intersect both flagships were more likely to achieve hits than those launched at closer targets.

"Tube Alpha ready!" Betts shouted. Daniel's finger was already stroking the firing switch. The thump! of the missile launching was simultaneous with the whang! of Bett's team breaking free the outer door of Tube Beta with a charge of explosive.

"Sir, permission to fire?" Sun begged. He was poised over the key that would trigger the four plasma cannon.

Der Grosser Karl's Parthian shot continued its track toward the Sissie. It was very close to burnout now, but its twelve-gee acceleration had given it more than sufficient residual velocity to overhaul the corvette in another ninety seconds.

"Negative!" Daniel said. "I'll give the order. Not till I give the order!"

Der Grosser Karl ran through the path of the Winckelmann's first salvo. There were seven missiles; the eighth had ruptured the Yorck. Either Pettin or his Chief Missileer had done a brilliant job of targeting. It wouldn't have been possible without Adele's intercepted course data, but not every officer would have thought to aim so as to threaten two enemy ships at a considerable distance from one another.

A segment struck the battleship's port outrigger, retracted since lifting from its berth on Tanais. There was a bright flash: metal blasted to vapor by kinetic energy. The secondary shock wave—the ball of glowing gas exploding from the impact at a significant fraction of light speed—hammered Der Grosser Karl's hull, whipping the vessel despite its enormous mass.

Though the battleship's targeting had been both hastier and less skillful than the Winckelmann's, her multiple tubes made up the difference. The Winckelmann's acceleration allowed her to pass well wide of all but three of the twenty-four missiles of the initial launch; regardless, a segment caught her squarely amidships. The flash had an electrical quality to it, high in the ultraviolet.

The missile aimed at the Princess Cecile reached burnout and separated. Daniel plotted the four tracks, then careted one and ordered, "Now, Sun! Everything you've got!"

The corvette's plasma cannon rang from both turrets. Surges of ionized nuclei spurted at light speed through the sole opening in the laser array and down the iridium bores.

Inevitably there was some leakage which the refractory gun-tube had to contain. Sun had the weapons on high rate, the four tubes cycling at a combined rate of six pulses per second. That couldn't be sustained for long periods because it didn't leave the guns long enough to cool between discharges.

It was the only chance the Princess Cecile had of surviving for a long period, however.

Despite the guns' enormous energy output, they couldn't hope to destroy tons of solid metal thousands of miles away. What they could do, if skillfully directed, was to nudge missiles aside by subliming material off one side as reaction mass.

Tube Alpha showed ready. Daniel launched another missile at Der Grosser Karl. With luck, Alpha would be reloaded again in time for another round, a last round if luck or the Gods decreed. The Sissie's crew might never know if these missiles too had struck—but they had three certain hits on a battleship, not a bad record to take to a spacers' heaven.

The Winckelmann swung into a slow tumble through the void. Her High Drive shut down momentarily, then restarted as Pettin or his replacement aligned the nozzles to counteract the thrust from the missile impact.

The crippled cruiser launched two missiles, then two more. By God she did!

"Daniel, the enemy's going to enter the Matrix!" Adele said. Had he ever heard Adele shout before? "Chastelaine's signaled 'All units shape course for Sonderfell immediately.' Daniel, they're running!"

Tube Alpha was loaded. Betts must have set the transport rollers to overspeed.

Daniel launched again, feeling the missiles in B magazine also starting to move. With Tube Beta in operation, the Princess Cecile was in fighting trim—except for mobility.

Segments of the incoming missile arrived. Vapor glowing with the fury of Sun's cannon bathed the corvette for an instant, a flash like lightning across Daniel's real-time display. There was a click like a distant whiplash; a few gauges jumped.

The Princess Cecile was end-on to the missile, showing minimal cross-sectional area to the threat. Daniel had aligned her with the center of the pattern formed when the missile separated. Three of the segments missed of their own, and Sun's plasma cannon thrust the last enough to the side that only thin-spread gas expanding from the flank of the projectile touched the ship.

Der Grosser Karl blurred off the display. Moments later the destroyers Ihn and Steinbrinck vanished also. They'd rerig in the Matrix before they started the long voyage to Sonderfell.

Daniel shook his head. Sonderfell! That route to the Sack was four months of sailing for well-found vessels. No wonder Chastelaine's squadron had managed to avoid being spotted en route! But how friendly the Khans of Sonderfell would be to a force so obviously defeated . . . ?

Daniel smiled. He had a degree of sympathy for Chastelaine as a fellow captain and spacer; but he couldn't say he was sorry about the result, no.

The admiral's decision made perfect sense. Der Grosser Karl was a new battleship, many times more valuable than the entire RCN squadron. She'd been badly damaged already and could with further bad luck—Chastelaine would think it was luck—be destroyed. It was his duty as a prudent commander to avoid further losses by withdrawing.

A computer would have agreed to the depths of its electronic soul.

The order to flee caught the Koellner and Giese with their antennas stowed. Both destroyers cut their thrust to zero to make the riggers' job easier, proceeding on a ballistic course. The Giese slipped into the Matrix within three minutes, a very creditable time, but her sister ship barely struggled out ahead of the missiles that the Winckelmann and Active launched at them for want of a better target.

Daniel shut down the High Drive, then let out his breath and felt all the strength drain from his body. Goodness, he'd merely been sitting at his console for the past hour. It felt like he'd been breaking rocks!

He switched the intercom manually. "Lieutenant Mon," he said. "Take the conn if you please. Coordinate with Engineering as to the best way to proceed toward the flagship while refitting our High Drive and plasma thrusters. Break. Mr. Pasternak, you may resume repairs. Coordinate with Lieutenant Mon."

The Princess Cecile was still streaking toward the rim of the Strymon system and the void beyond. The velocity at which she'd entered sidereal space would take days to brake with the High Drive, even if all the nozzles were operating. If Woetjans couldn't get some sort of rig operable with the corvette's own spares, Daniel would have to beg help from the Active.

"Daniel?" said Adele. "The Yorck is signalling that it surrenders. Commodore Pettin's ships are much closer than we are, but I'm not sure they're monitoring the open channels at the moment. Would you like me to retransmit on the squadron's command link?"

"What?" said Daniel. "Yes, if you would please, Adele. There's no point in having hundreds more of the poor devils die when there's no reason for it."

"Captain?" Woetjans said. The bosun was breathing hard. "We're getting three antennas on each of the aft rings rigged. Forward we're fucked, maybe even in a shipyard we're fucked, but you'll be able to crawl into the Matrix inside of ten. Over."

Daniel beamed. "Woetjans, I'd marry you if I thought I were worthy!" he said. "Break. Lieutenant Mon, the Chief of Rig says we'll have partial sails available in ten minutes. Plot a course toward the flagship, if you please; and also a course back to Strymon, where I expect we'll be directed as soon as the commodore learns who our passenger is. Captain out."

Daniel stood carefully, using the back of his chair as a support until he was sure that his legs weren't going to fail him. When he sat at the console he locked one leg under the chairpost. During the battle just over, he'd clamped it firmly enough that he'd cut off circulation.

"Adele?" he said. "Would you care to come with me to the wardroom? I think it's time to release President Vaughn and offer our apologies. I'd like some company."

Offering Adele his hand, Daniel added—smiling but truthful nonetheless, "In addition, I prefer to have you beside me when I talk to Tovera."

Daniel had left a short imagery loop running on the command console. Der Grosser Karl hung in a black field, gouting plasma from its turrets—

Then spewing gas and flame from both flanks as the Princess Cecile's fourth missile struck.

Cinnabar forever!

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Framed

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Contents

Chapter Thirty-three

Daniel whistled "Been on the Job Too Long" as he computed tracks for the eighteen missiles remaining aboard the Princess Cecile. It was quite a cheerful tune, though the words were another matter. That was true of a lot of catchy songs, come to think.

When the women all heard that King Brady was dead—  

The Princess Cecile would pass through the Alliance squadron at high velocity. That wouldn't affect the plasma cannon, of course, except to minimize the corvette's exposure to the bolts, but it did mean that Alliance missiles would have a long time catching up even at twelve-gee accelerations.

They went back home and they dressed in red.  

The converse was that the Sissie's own missiles, save for the pair already loaded in the tubes, would be fighting a great deal of negative inertia as they struggled back toward their target. Der Grosser Karl would be able to avoid them easily.

All Daniel's missiles were aimed at the battleship: if Der Grosser Karl were damaged, the powerful remainder of the squadron would be more concerned with defending the cripple than in chasing down Commodore Pettin's force. A big "if," of course.

They come slippin' and aslidin' up and down the street—  

Light flickered as the Princess Cecile shifted onto the final leg of her approach. Daniel's course calculation had taken fifteen minutes, three times as long as so short a voyage would require, because he'd added a fourth parameter to the mix.

Usually an attack was made with a minimum of rig aloft so that the vessel could maneuver on High Drive without damaging its antennas. This time Daniel wanted every possible—every surviving—mast raised to its full height and all sails spread. That was a strikingly inefficient way to navigate the Matrix; but in a portion of normal space bathed with the point-blank output of eight-inch plasma cannon, it was the corvette's only hope of survival.

In their old Mother Hubbards and their stocking feet!  

Daniel paused in his calculations—for rounds fifteen and sixteen, and if the Sissie survived to launch them she and her crew would be very fortunate indeed—to watch the sail schematic change to reflect the new rig. Starboard Three and Four didn't budge at the thrust of the jacks. Though undamaged at the quick glance which alone was possible after the initial attack, a splash of plasma had welded their base hinges.

Woetjans must have expected that, because at least six mauls slammed rhythmically into the masts within seconds of the jam. Both began to lift. S3 continued normally, but the pump pressure driving S4 flatlined when the antenna had only elevated a few degrees. A hydraulic line—scored by plasma, fractured by an injudicious hammerblow, or simply filled with the cussed determination of machines to fail—had broken.

Brady, Brady, Brady, don't you know you done wrong?  

The mast resumed its rise, again within seconds of the initial failure. The bosun must already have rigged tackle to blocks at the head of adjacent, previously extended, masts.

Daniel felt a rush of affection. By God! he wasn't going to let Woetjans throw her life away. Not even if saving her required a sincerely offered threat to blow her head off if she didn't obey.

Antenna Starboard 4 locked into place and, without further hesitation, unfurled its suit of sails. The Princess Cecile was wearing nearly eighty percent of her rig, an unusual event made more remarkable by the battle damage that alone prevented the figure being even higher.

Atoms stripped of electrons and accelerated by repulsion up the bore of a plasma cannon had velocities little short of light speed, but negligible mass. Their ravening touch would destroy the first layer of any matter they collided with, but they wouldn't penetrate. Damage beyond the target's outer layer was a result of transmitted impact—which in the case of sail fabric was almost zero.

After the battleship's initial volley had removed the sails, further bolts would scour the hull. At point-blank range, fluxes intended to change the course of missiles approaching at .6 C would make short work of a corvette.

You bust into my bar when the game was on . . .  

The astrogation computer changed the sails' potentials as programmed; Daniel checked the results against the plan and his instinct. All was well.

He grinned. If that was the phrase to use under the circumstances.

"Three minutes to reentry to normal space!" Dorst said.

The riggers, their job completed, were clanging back within the Sissie's hull. The inner airlock opened outside the bridge. One figure stepped through, Lt. Mon lifting off the helmet of his rigging suit. He closed the hatch behind him.

You sprung my latch and you broke my door . . .  

Catching Daniel's eye, Mon shouted, "Hogg's staying in the lock with Woetjans. Says it's as good a place as the next, he figures."

Daniel thought of his short, dumpy servant and the rangy bosun. Under the circumstances the two were an ideal pair: they understood one another perfectly. Missed communications had killed more people than ever malice dreamed of doing.

"Daniel?" Adele said. She'd waited until she saw his attention drawn away from the calculations on his display. "When we return to normal space, I intend to direct the other ships, the escort ships? Direct them to return to Tanais in the name of Admiral Chastelaine. I doubt they'll obey, but I thought it might confuse them. Is that all right?"

Daniel opened a window in his holographic display so that he could meet Adele's eyes without a fog of light between them. She looked worried, concerned about having overstepped her proper authority.

"Great heavens, yes!" Daniel said. "But won't they—oh, I see. You will be sending it in the proper Alliance code."

Adele smiled faintly. "Yes, that's my greatest question," she said. "Less than half the flagship's communications are encrypted properly, so it might be more believable if I introduced errors in my transmissions. Doing that offended my sense of rightness, however, so unless you require me to . . . ?"

"Quite all right," Daniel said. "I'd hate for your last act in this life to be one you found to smack of impropriety."

"One minute to reentry to normal space," announced Mon. "Prepare for action."

"What do you mean, prepare for action?" shouted someone—shouted Delos Vaughn coming up the corridor toward the bridge. The helmet of his emergency suit was hinged open, bouncing on his chest. "We've escaped, I saw us escape! We're safe now!"

There was a display in the wardroom. Tovera must have set it to receive real-time data during the attack. She'd have known how, after all.

Daniel frowned. He'd ordered Hogg to release the president, but it hadn't occurred to him that Vaughn would then choose to interfere with the business of war.

He noted with further irritation that Tovera walked just behind Vaughn. Her smile could easily be described as mocking, though one had to admit that Tovera's expressions were pretty much a blank slate for the viewer to color with emotion.

"Mister Vaughn—" Daniel began.

Vaughn strode onto the bridge, either oblivious of Daniel's orders or in defiance of them. He said, "I won't let you kill us all!"

"Secure the civilian!" Daniel said.

He actually didn't see Tovera's hand move, gripping Vaughn by the left ear and twisting. Vaughn screamed, then stopped as he, turning his head to reduce the pain of his ear, brought his right eye into contact with the muzzle of Tovera's submachine gun.

They backed off the bridge. Adele nodded to Daniel and put her pistol away.

"Reentry into—"

Der Grosser Karl, broadside and apparently huge as a planet, filled the real-time display. Her sails were ragged, torn both by the missiles and by gouts of plasma from her own cannon. She was of the latest Alliance design, mounting thirty-two 21cm plasma cannon in quadruple turrets.

Thump! First missile away.

Hellfire vaporized the Princess Cecile's sails and antennas, dressing her in a glowing ball of her own rig. Plasma continued to rip from at least eight yawning muzzles, but the vapor of destruction protected the corvette from worse.

Thump!  

The Princess Cecile yawed with a world-filling crash. Her hull whipped, frames warping and plates in the double hull gaping apart. Cabin pressure dropped and Daniel reflexively closed his faceshield.

There hadn't been enough time for the battleship to plot trajectories for her own missiles, but at such short range the heavy cannon had virtually the impact of solid projectiles. As the corvette punched clear of the expanding cloud, one bolt or possibly two had struck her well forward on the underside.

The first missile entered Der Grosser Karl amidships, like a pin through the thorax of a fat-bodied butterfly with tattered wings. Gas puffed from the point of impact; sparkling fire exploded where the remains of the missile, liquescent from friction, tore its exit. A gun turret, almost complete, lifted from the hull. Three of the heavy iridium gun-tubes spun away on separate trajectories.

Daniel's display flared, but the volley that overloaded the hull sensors didn't actually strike the corvette. Close doesn't count—

The Princess Cecile's second missile clipped the battleship's stern and converted itself and a thousand tonnes of its target into white fire. The corvette had exited the Matrix at .1 C; her missiles added that to the kinetic energy of their own acceleration when they struck.

The Princess Cecile was through the squadron, dismasted and with half her High Drive nozzles unserviceable. She was going nearly directly away from Der Grosser Karl and should have been an easy, low-deflection, target for the battleship's cannon.

Der Grosser Karl had stopped firing.

And now you're lyin' dead on my barroom floor!  

Daniel switched his display to the Plot Position Indicator. The Princess Cecile was already off her programmed course. A glance at the systems sidebar showed why: red dots for nine of the sixteen High Drive nozzles, red circles for three more. The four nozzles which the sleet of ions had spared weren't sufficient to warp the corvette around the curve of Getica and out of line with Der Grosser Karl.

The rumbling of missiles within the corvette's belly had stopped. Daniel knew unconsciously there was something wrong. His own mind hadn't put a cause to it till a heartbeat later when Betts leaped up from his console and shouted over the general channel, "The fucking outer doors are fucking welded shut! All fucking missile personnel to the fucking tubes! We'll draw the fucking ready rounds and blow the fucking doors open!"

The Chief Missileer disappeared down the forward companionway. His lips were still moving, but his words no longer filled the general channel. Either he'd switched his helmet to his unit push or—more likely—Adele had switched it for him.

Either way, both Missiles and Signals were in good shape; at any rate, as good as human effort could make them. As for the rig . . .

The battleship hadn't resumed firing, and the remainder of the Alliance squadron was too distant for plasma weapons to be a serious threat. There was still risk; but then, there was always risk.

"Riggers topside!" Daniel ordered. "Woetjans, do what you can—I'm not expecting much. Break. Engineering, send as many techs topside as you can spare. I want the three nozzles with minor damage repaired soonest, and if it's possible to replace any of the others, that too. Captain out!"

Daniel doubted replacement would be possible. The rosette of nozzles must have taken a direct hit. Pasternak had shown himself to be a good man in milder conditions; now he'd have a chance to test his mettle against battle damage.

Sun was twisted around in his chair, staring at Daniel in anguish. He said on the command channel, "Sir, I could've raped her sails, raped them! I can still hurt her bad, sir."

Daniel looked at his gunner. "Could you have done Der Grosser Karl a tenth the harm she did herself trying to claw us? You know you couldn't. And I know that if we need your cannon, I won't want their bores shot out from playing games."

More gently Daniel added, "We've almost got maneuvering way, Sun. Luck and your guns are the only things that're going to keep us alive for the next hour."

Sun bit his lip and nodded. "Sir," he muttered, turning back to his console.

There was nothing fatal about Der Grosser Karl's injuries, though she'd be a year in dock repairing them or Daniel hadn't learned anything in the time he'd spent hanging around the premises of Bergen and Associates. He understood why the battleship's crew was wholly concerned with its own problems instead of acting to finish off the crippled corvette. What he didn't understand was why Chastelaine—or the acting squadron commander if Chastelaine was a casualty—hadn't detailed a pair of destroyers to that task.

Unless—

Daniel shrank the scale of his PPI to encompass a sphere nearly a million miles in diameter. There should have been six ships in that volume besides the central pip of the Princess Cecile herself. Instead there were nine: the Alliance squadron, and three vessels more at the outer edge of the coverage area. They had their identification transponders switched off, but Daniel knew who they were as surely as the Alliance commander must.

Commodore Pettin hadn't fled in the breathing space the Princess Cecile had provided him. In the best tradition of the RCN, he was coming to fight.

Adele kept her face expressionless as she viewed the corvette's outer hull through imagery provided by Woetjans's suit. If she hadn't known better she'd have guessed she was looking at a nickel-iron asteroid, pitted and half-melted by a pass through the upper reaches of an atmosphere.

The internal air pressure was beginning to rise. Damage crews filled spaces with quick-setting foam, blocking leaks through torn plates and ruptured seams. It wasn't up to eight pounds yet, and Adele had been repeatedly warned during drills that there could still be catastrophic hull failure at this stage of the proceedings.

She unlatched her helmet anyway. It constricted her mind, and that was far more worrisome than the chance of death.

"They're launching!" Sun said. He'd opened his helmet also; his voice was squeaky but clear to Adele in the next station. "Look at those bastards! Well, we didn't get their fire control, that's for sure!"

The Alliance ships exchanged course data on what they assumed were secure links. Adele intercepted and decrypted the signals, then forwarded them to Daniel. Presumably he was doing whatever could be done with it, his face intent as he typed furiously.

Voice communications within the Alliance squadron were properly Adele's own area of responsibility. They passed through her ears and she filtered them for content. Occasionally she summarized them for Daniel and the Battle Direction Center.

Admiral Chastelaine hadn't panicked, but he was in a fury—an equally disruptive state of affairs in respect to the good governance of his squadron. He'd announced he was proceeding by gig to the Yorck, the heavy cruiser, to transfer his flag; had cancelled that order and summoned a destroyer to carry him from the damaged battleship to the Yorck; and had finally, at least for now, determined to direct the battle from aboard Der Grosser Karl. Adele had no idea of what was going on inside the Alliance vessels, but she very much doubted that the moral atmosphere resembled the ordered enthusiasm aboard the Princess Cecile.

Adele's ears were given over to duty, but her eyes were her own. She echoed Sun's display in a corner of hers, replacing the wasteland of the corvette's hull.

At once she felt her spirits lift—not for what she saw, but because she no longer viewed the Princess Cecile's mutilated exterior. Adele wasn't the sort of sentimentalist—the sort of fool!—who imagined machines have life, let alone personalities. Even so, there are tools which serve their users so well that it could be reasonable to feel regret when they break.

Sun's attack screen looked similar to Daniel's PPI, save that it showed missiles as colored tracks rather than points. The computed courses were orange, with the portions already traversed in scarlet.

Adele understood the gunner's amazement. Der Grosser Karl had launched twenty-four missiles, more than the corvette's capacity at full load; and as Adele watched, another dozen rippled from the battleship's tubes.

"Adele!" Daniel snapped as his eyes and hands continued their separate work. "Can you transmit the Alliance courses to Commodore Pettin. Soonest!"

"Yes, Daniel," Adele said mildly. "I've been doing that."

She didn't add, "Of course." This was no time to play foolish games.

There were proper times for punctilio, of course. She was a Mundy of Chatsworth and had no intention of brooking a deliberate insult; but she'd have been equally curt with Daniel if she needed something from him and failure would be the price of delay.

Daniel opened his helmet. Adele suspected the delay had been because he was busy, not that thin air or the risk concerned him. Internal pressure had risen to over ten psi, enough that Adele's lungs no longer felt as though they couldn't fill.

"Admiral Chastelaine knows he's not very maneuverable," Daniel said. He spoke conversationally, but Adele noticed that his eyes were on the data, not her face. "He's using his magazines to do what his High Drive can't, keep our ships away from Der Grosser Karl while the rest of his squadron destroys them."

He smiled brilliantly and met Adele's eyes for an instant. "And as your intercepts show, he's mad enough to chew rocks."

The three Cinnabar vessels—points undifferentiated in size at this range—vanished from the display a few seconds apart. Instead of lowering their antennas to maneuver in normal space, they'd reentered the Matrix.

The Princess Cecile's missiles began to move on their trackways. A metallic screech quivered through the ship, bringing a violent curse from Sun. Adele had no idea of whether or not the sound had anything to do with the missiles.

Daniel brought up real-time imagery of the Alliance ships. Adele hesitated a moment, then echoed the vessels in a line across the top of her display.

When the Princess Cecile appeared, Admiral Chastelaine had been preparing to enter the Matrix on a short voyage from Getica to Strymon. Now the Yorck and two of the destroyers were taking down all their antennas to ready themselves for battle, and the remaining pair of destroyers were lowering all but the rings at their far bow and stern.

"R Class destroyers," Daniel said in a tone of professional approval. "Quite good ships. Their ordinary magazine capacity's sixty rounds."

"They're the Ihn and Steinbrinck," Adele said, expanding a sidebar to check the names. "The other two are the Koellner and Giese; and yes, they reported magazines full at sixty missiles each."

The Alliance ships were reforming in a hollow globe thirty thousand miles in diameter. Each vessel was under power at a constant one-gee acceleration. The course schematic made it look as though they were in orbit, but in fact they circled a point in empty space. Tanais's orbital motion was carrying the moon slowly away from the squadron, though the ships were already beyond range of support by the base defenses when the Princess Cecile attacked.

"Chastelaine's marking time, waiting to see what the RCN's going to do," Daniel said. "He'll react then—you see that he's ready to respond either to an attack or to dog us with two destroyers until the rest of the squadron can rejoin if Pettin tries to run. Though . . ."

He pursed his lips judiciously, peering at the flagship's image.

"I don't think the admiral would either leave his battleship without escort or engage with his force divided," he said. "With Der Grosser Karl in its present condition, his squadron would have a very long chase to run down even a crock like the Winckelmann. But I really doubt that question's going to arise, because Commodore Pettin will—"

Three ships coalesced out of the Matrix, again within seconds of one another. They were driving toward the Alliance squadron, perpendicular to the plane of the Strymon system. Daniel had programmed his display to include them without further input: the Winckelmann, Active, and Petty, broadside to their axis of movement so that their missile tubes amidships were clear. They began lowering their antennas at the moment they reappeared in normal space.

The ships were glossy with false precision. The Princess Cecile's software was integrating real-time images with archival files to refine views of vessels which were more than 200,000 miles from the corvette.

Slivers separated from first the Winckelmann, then the two destroyers. They were launching missiles.

"Look what he's done!" Daniel said. "Look, look where the Yorck is, Adele! That's your doing, letting the commodore plan his attack like this!"

Adele stared at the display. She didn't understand. She wasn't used to thinking spatially, so the fact that the Alliance heavy cruiser was near the axis of the Cinnabar squadron's motion didn't mean anything to her. Some vessel was bound to be, after all.

Alliance ships were launching missiles also; some seconds behind the attackers but in greater numbers regardless. Der Grosser Karl alone spasmed a dozen, then a second dozen from her dorsal and ventral batteries respectively. Adele knew from the transmitted manifest that there were hundreds more rounds available behind a first salvo that by itself outdid the total output of Commodore Pettin's force.

Beside Adele, Sun shrieked in delight; both Mon and Vesey were crowing happily over the command channel. "Daniel, I don't see!" she said.

The ships were maneuvering, though their initial velocities—particularly those of the RCN vessels—were much higher than the increments added or subtracted by their High Drives. Missile tracks spread across the display like wisps of colored hair, the orange predictions changing to red as the seconds passed.

Daniel hammered keys, adding the ships' projected courses to the display. "Oh," said Adele in sudden understanding. "Oh!"

The Yorck was sailing into the junction of not only the RCN missiles but those from Der Grosser Karl's capacious magazines. Commodore Pettin had maneuvered the Alliance heavy cruiser into an inferno of friendly fire.

The Princess Cecile's hull rang, a sound as sharp as that of the riggers' mauls but much louder. Moments later a second blow made the frames clang.

"Bridge, that's Tube Alpha clear!" Betts's breathless voice announced. The low-frequency grumble of missiles moving started again. "She'll be reloaded in a minute thirty, and by the Lord we'll have Beta ready in five minutes more! Missiles out!"

Daniel's jubilant face suddenly shed all expression. He began again to type with grim determination.

"Captain!" Lt. Mon reported from the Battle Direction Center. "The battleship just launched a round at us. Over."

Adele frowned. What does one missile matter against the scores they've already fired? 

She looked at the display and found it suddenly clear. The geometry was simple enough that even she could see the relationships.

The Princess Cecile was heading directly away from the battleship it had slashed at point-blank range. By now the distance was very great due to the velocity the corvette had built up in the Matrix, but the two ships' proper motion was nearly zero. The computed track of the missile and the corvette's projected course were identical.

And, with the damage to her High Drive, there was virtually nothing the Princess Cecile could do to change that relationship.

Pasternak was topside. Many chief engineers would have denied that it was their duty to clamber about the hull of a ship while it was under weigh; they weren't riggers. If the thrusters or High Drive nozzles needed looking after, why then there were technicians to take the risk of drifting toward infinity while the ship accelerated away from them.

If Pasternak had felt that way, he'd have been looking for a different berth at the end of this voyage, and he wouldn't much like the character Daniel offered when discussing him with other captains.

Daniel looked again at his course calculations. Mind, the Princess Cecile's present voyage might end very abruptly and under such conditions that none of her crew need worry about the future. Still, there was hope.

"Mister Pasternak?" Daniel said. Had the Chief Engineer thought to fit his suit with a radio before he went topside? Pray God he had, though needs must Daniel would use Hogg or a rigger to relay his message. "What's the status of the damaged nozzles? Captain over."

"Sir, we're just finishing Number Five," Pasternak came back instantly. "The sheathing—" the electromagnetic tape that kept the stream of antimatter centered until it reached the nozzle to interact with the spray of normal matter "—burned through but the tube and nozzle were all right. The feeds to Ten and Twelve are fine, but they shouldn't be run till the nozzles're replaced. Fifteen minutes apiece if we're lucky, but if the ion stream welded the fittings we'll have to cut them loose. I can't promise much then. Over."

Daniel looked at his calculations. With three more nozzles on line, just possibly . . .

Aloud he said, "Pasternak, finish up on Five soonest and bring your crew aboard. Break. Woetjans, we'll be increasing thrust to one point six gee as soon as engineering has Nozzle Five ready. Nozzles Ten and Twelve may fail at any moment, so watch yourself around Frame Sixty."

Daniel stared at his display for a moment, then added, "Woetjans? I recommend you bring your crews aboard now, unless you're convinced their work over the next five minutes is crucial. It's possible that we'll be maneuvering violently. Over."

"Roger," Woetjans said. There was physical strain in her voice. Daniel suspected the bosun was bracing herself with the grip of one hand and using the other to put as much force on the end of a come-along as three ordinary crewmen could've managed. "You handle the bloody course, we'll handle the bloody rig. Out!"

"Task accomplished, coming aboard," Pasternak said crisply. "Engineering out."

Daniel cut in the additional High Drive nozzles. The icons for Ten and Twelve went solid green under dint of Daniel's overriding command, but they pulsed to show the computer's displeasure.

Daniel smiled faintly. They'd never build a computer that could fight battles successfully: to win, sometimes you had to do things that made no logical sense. You had to be willing to die as well, but an RCN officer was just as willing to die as any machine was.

On the attack screen, three Alliance missile tracks intersected that of the Petty. The destroyer was braking at three gravities, thrust that was certain to ripple plates and start seams. The scale was too small for certainty: to the last Daniel was able to hope that what looked like a hit was in fact a narrow miss.

The Petty's image deformed. A ball of gas puffed around the destroyer like blood pooling beneath a corpse. The fusion bottle failed then, devouring everything astern of the blast wall in a white flash. Debris from the bow section shotgunned away. Some of the fragments might be suited crewmen, but there was no possibility of them being rescued.

"Sir!" Mon said urgently. "We're accelerating on our previous course. I've figured thrust to produce the greatest possible tangent. Shall I take the conn?"

"Negative, negative!" Daniel said. "Mr. Mon, I'll determine the Sissie's course!"

He checked his display to make sure that he hadn't handed off control to the BDC at some past moment and failed to retrieve it. It was absolutely critical that the course remain exactly as he'd set it.

Even if he'd guessed wrong. A ship could have only one captain, and Daniel Leary was the Princess Cecile's at present.

One of the stern airlocks cycled with a hesitation noticeable to a spacer experienced in the Princess Cecile's patterns. The inner valve had warped, though it must still be sealing adequately or Pasternak's crew wouldn't have been able to use the lock without authorization from the command console.

An RCN missile hit the Yorck forward. Three seconds later, a missile from Der Grosser Karl spitted the Alliance heavy cruiser at virtually the same frame but from starboard instead of the port side.

The Yorck continued on its previous course. A bubble of atmosphere surrounded the vessel, expanding slowly. That the cruiser stayed centered in the ball of gas showed that its High Drive had shut down: until the double impact, the Yorck had been braking hard in a desperate attempt to avoid the kill zone.

The Winckelmann was so distant from the Alliance battleship that missiles the ships launched at one another burned all their fuel, then continued on ballistic courses. At burnout the missile separated into four segments, closely spaced but nonetheless increasing the coverage area considerably. Though the difference didn't show at the scale of Daniel's display, he knew that the missiles about to intersect both flagships were more likely to achieve hits than those launched at closer targets.

"Tube Alpha ready!" Betts shouted. Daniel's finger was already stroking the firing switch. The thump! of the missile launching was simultaneous with the whang! of Bett's team breaking free the outer door of Tube Beta with a charge of explosive.

"Sir, permission to fire?" Sun begged. He was poised over the key that would trigger the four plasma cannon.

Der Grosser Karl's Parthian shot continued its track toward the Sissie. It was very close to burnout now, but its twelve-gee acceleration had given it more than sufficient residual velocity to overhaul the corvette in another ninety seconds.

"Negative!" Daniel said. "I'll give the order. Not till I give the order!"

Der Grosser Karl ran through the path of the Winckelmann's first salvo. There were seven missiles; the eighth had ruptured the Yorck. Either Pettin or his Chief Missileer had done a brilliant job of targeting. It wouldn't have been possible without Adele's intercepted course data, but not every officer would have thought to aim so as to threaten two enemy ships at a considerable distance from one another.

A segment struck the battleship's port outrigger, retracted since lifting from its berth on Tanais. There was a bright flash: metal blasted to vapor by kinetic energy. The secondary shock wave—the ball of glowing gas exploding from the impact at a significant fraction of light speed—hammered Der Grosser Karl's hull, whipping the vessel despite its enormous mass.

Though the battleship's targeting had been both hastier and less skillful than the Winckelmann's, her multiple tubes made up the difference. The Winckelmann's acceleration allowed her to pass well wide of all but three of the twenty-four missiles of the initial launch; regardless, a segment caught her squarely amidships. The flash had an electrical quality to it, high in the ultraviolet.

The missile aimed at the Princess Cecile reached burnout and separated. Daniel plotted the four tracks, then careted one and ordered, "Now, Sun! Everything you've got!"

The corvette's plasma cannon rang from both turrets. Surges of ionized nuclei spurted at light speed through the sole opening in the laser array and down the iridium bores.

Inevitably there was some leakage which the refractory gun-tube had to contain. Sun had the weapons on high rate, the four tubes cycling at a combined rate of six pulses per second. That couldn't be sustained for long periods because it didn't leave the guns long enough to cool between discharges.

It was the only chance the Princess Cecile had of surviving for a long period, however.

Despite the guns' enormous energy output, they couldn't hope to destroy tons of solid metal thousands of miles away. What they could do, if skillfully directed, was to nudge missiles aside by subliming material off one side as reaction mass.

Tube Alpha showed ready. Daniel launched another missile at Der Grosser Karl. With luck, Alpha would be reloaded again in time for another round, a last round if luck or the Gods decreed. The Sissie's crew might never know if these missiles too had struck—but they had three certain hits on a battleship, not a bad record to take to a spacers' heaven.

The Winckelmann swung into a slow tumble through the void. Her High Drive shut down momentarily, then restarted as Pettin or his replacement aligned the nozzles to counteract the thrust from the missile impact.

The crippled cruiser launched two missiles, then two more. By God she did!

"Daniel, the enemy's going to enter the Matrix!" Adele said. Had he ever heard Adele shout before? "Chastelaine's signaled 'All units shape course for Sonderfell immediately.' Daniel, they're running!"

Tube Alpha was loaded. Betts must have set the transport rollers to overspeed.

Daniel launched again, feeling the missiles in B magazine also starting to move. With Tube Beta in operation, the Princess Cecile was in fighting trim—except for mobility.

Segments of the incoming missile arrived. Vapor glowing with the fury of Sun's cannon bathed the corvette for an instant, a flash like lightning across Daniel's real-time display. There was a click like a distant whiplash; a few gauges jumped.

The Princess Cecile was end-on to the missile, showing minimal cross-sectional area to the threat. Daniel had aligned her with the center of the pattern formed when the missile separated. Three of the segments missed of their own, and Sun's plasma cannon thrust the last enough to the side that only thin-spread gas expanding from the flank of the projectile touched the ship.

Der Grosser Karl blurred off the display. Moments later the destroyers Ihn and Steinbrinck vanished also. They'd rerig in the Matrix before they started the long voyage to Sonderfell.

Daniel shook his head. Sonderfell! That route to the Sack was four months of sailing for well-found vessels. No wonder Chastelaine's squadron had managed to avoid being spotted en route! But how friendly the Khans of Sonderfell would be to a force so obviously defeated . . . ?

Daniel smiled. He had a degree of sympathy for Chastelaine as a fellow captain and spacer; but he couldn't say he was sorry about the result, no.

The admiral's decision made perfect sense. Der Grosser Karl was a new battleship, many times more valuable than the entire RCN squadron. She'd been badly damaged already and could with further bad luck—Chastelaine would think it was luck—be destroyed. It was his duty as a prudent commander to avoid further losses by withdrawing.

A computer would have agreed to the depths of its electronic soul.

The order to flee caught the Koellner and Giese with their antennas stowed. Both destroyers cut their thrust to zero to make the riggers' job easier, proceeding on a ballistic course. The Giese slipped into the Matrix within three minutes, a very creditable time, but her sister ship barely struggled out ahead of the missiles that the Winckelmann and Active launched at them for want of a better target.

Daniel shut down the High Drive, then let out his breath and felt all the strength drain from his body. Goodness, he'd merely been sitting at his console for the past hour. It felt like he'd been breaking rocks!

He switched the intercom manually. "Lieutenant Mon," he said. "Take the conn if you please. Coordinate with Engineering as to the best way to proceed toward the flagship while refitting our High Drive and plasma thrusters. Break. Mr. Pasternak, you may resume repairs. Coordinate with Lieutenant Mon."

The Princess Cecile was still streaking toward the rim of the Strymon system and the void beyond. The velocity at which she'd entered sidereal space would take days to brake with the High Drive, even if all the nozzles were operating. If Woetjans couldn't get some sort of rig operable with the corvette's own spares, Daniel would have to beg help from the Active.

"Daniel?" said Adele. "The Yorck is signalling that it surrenders. Commodore Pettin's ships are much closer than we are, but I'm not sure they're monitoring the open channels at the moment. Would you like me to retransmit on the squadron's command link?"

"What?" said Daniel. "Yes, if you would please, Adele. There's no point in having hundreds more of the poor devils die when there's no reason for it."

"Captain?" Woetjans said. The bosun was breathing hard. "We're getting three antennas on each of the aft rings rigged. Forward we're fucked, maybe even in a shipyard we're fucked, but you'll be able to crawl into the Matrix inside of ten. Over."

Daniel beamed. "Woetjans, I'd marry you if I thought I were worthy!" he said. "Break. Lieutenant Mon, the Chief of Rig says we'll have partial sails available in ten minutes. Plot a course toward the flagship, if you please; and also a course back to Strymon, where I expect we'll be directed as soon as the commodore learns who our passenger is. Captain out."

Daniel stood carefully, using the back of his chair as a support until he was sure that his legs weren't going to fail him. When he sat at the console he locked one leg under the chairpost. During the battle just over, he'd clamped it firmly enough that he'd cut off circulation.

"Adele?" he said. "Would you care to come with me to the wardroom? I think it's time to release President Vaughn and offer our apologies. I'd like some company."

Offering Adele his hand, Daniel added—smiling but truthful nonetheless, "In addition, I prefer to have you beside me when I talk to Tovera."

Daniel had left a short imagery loop running on the command console. Der Grosser Karl hung in a black field, gouting plasma from its turrets—

Then spewing gas and flame from both flanks as the Princess Cecile's fourth missile struck.

Cinnabar forever!

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