Adele looked worn as she came around the end of the outrigger where Daniel stood looking up at the freighter's stern. Mr. Pasternak had left several minutes before to return to the Goldenfels' Power Room where he was rewiring the High Drive installation. Daniel had stayed to . . .
He grinned. He hadn't stayed for any particular reason beyond the fact that he was exhausted and nobody happened to be shouting at him right this moment, forcing his attention onto the next problem. If Adele was tired, she wasn't the only one. The past . . . seventeen days . . . had been very hard. Daniel felt obscurely pleased to have remembered the length of time they'd been here on Morzanga.
Adele followed the line of his gaze to the hull above. She frowned. "Are those cracks serious?" she said. Her lips pursed and she added, "That is, they are cracks, aren't they?"
"Yes, I'm afraid that my righting technique did more damage than the blast that threw her onto her side had in the first place," Daniel said, looking up again though he knew perfectly well what he was going to see. "Still, it couldn't be helped."
The outrigger struts were attached to the hull frames. They hadn't broken when the ship slammed down harder than the shock absorbers could compensate for, but they'd bent—and, bending, had buckled hull plates around the base of each strut. Straightening the plates would be a dockyard job and a major one at that.
"About thirty percent of the Goldenfels' spaces no longer hold air," he continued. "Fortunately the main passages are axial and airtight, so we can close off compartments and still have use of the ship from stem to stern. Since we're a skeleton crew, we don't need even as much volume as we have left."
He grinned. "We're a well-gnawed skeleton at that, I fear."
"She isn't the Goldenfels," Adele said absently as she knuckled her eyes. "That was her cover name. According to the bridge computer she's actually HSK2 Atlantis, an Alliance naval unit."
She looked at Daniel. "There's a separate bridge unit that isn't linked to the ship systems," she explained. "That's why I wasn't able to access it before when we. . . ."
She stuck her hand out, then turned it over to mime the way the freighter had flopped onto its side. The gesture was perfectly clear, but it amused Daniel to realize how very tired they must both be that they were unable to call up familiar words.
"Pasternak'll finish with the High Drive soon, probably within twenty-four hours," Daniel said, trying to swim through the fog that surrounded his mental processes. He really needed rest, and for the life of him he couldn't imagine when he was going to get it. The dilemma made him smile, albeit tiredly. "I really want to lift from here. There's hundreds of the Goldenfels' crew out there in the bush with impellers. I don't think they could successfully storm the ships, not with the plasma cannon constantly manned, but I expected constant sniping."
Adele cleared her throat. She seemed embarrassed.
Daniel gave her a sharp look; he was beginning to come out of his fog. "Go on, tell me," he said more sharply than he'd intended.
"Before Tovera entered my service," Adele said, looking out toward the jungle, "she worked for an officer of the Fifth Bureau, the Alliance security office which reports directly to Guarantor Porra."
"Go on," Daniel said. He hadn't known or particularly wanted to know the details, but the general outline wasn't a surprise. If Adele—and Hogg—trusted Tovera, that was enough for him.
"She has authentication codes that the Alliance signals officer would recognize, even if he isn't himself a member of the Fifth Bureau," Adele said. "Many of the castaways retain their commo helmets, so Tovera could contact the directly and expect her message to be spread throughout the body of the crew. She asked for my help because she wouldn't have been able to determine the correct frequencies herself."
"Ah," said Daniel. "Of course we'd have responded to snipers with the plasma cannon, but I was surprised that that implied threat that had completely forestalled incidents. Tovera made the threat more personal, I gather?"
"She said that if a Cinnabar spacer was wounded, she'd kill a prisoner," Adele said. She swallowed and turned so that her eyes met Daniel's. "She said that if a Cinnabar spacer was killed, she would kill five prisoners. And she said that Captain Leary knew nothing of this: she was with the Fifth Bureau, and it wasn't for mere Fleet personnel to question the Guarantor's purposes."
She cleared her throat. "And I didn't stop her, Daniel."
"Stopping Tovera . . . ," Daniel said, "or Hogg, either one, isn't a process to enter into lightly. We have enough enemies in this business that I'm not going to turn down any help that's offered."
He rubbed his eyes but he shouldn't have, not for a moment yet, because when he was no longer looking at his immediate surroundings he caught a vision of what might have happened: Hogg holding a screaming prisoner by the hair—because Hogg was involved, had maybe planned the whole thing—and drawing his knife, he'd use his knife, across her throat.
"But I'm glad you didn't tell me before," Daniel continued, noticing the tremble in his voice, "because I would've tried to stop it."
He grinned, a harder expression than his usual.
"And given the good result it's apparently obtained," he said, "that would've been a pity."
Adele nodded. A team of technicians under Mr. Pasternak himself was adjusting the jury-rigged High Drive mounts in the bow. Probably to change the subject she said, "The ship those came from was much smaller than this one. Will these be able to lift us?"
"Well, lift isn't the question," Daniel said, walking forward a few steps so that they had a better view of the newly installed motors. "The plasma thrusters will do that, and they weren't damaged when the High Drive failed."
He grinned again. "Mr. Pasternak and I don't believe they were damaged. We'll see, of course. But the High Drive gives us our impulse in sidereal space. Since our progress in the Matrix is a function of that initial impulse, the present much-reduced output will delay our arrival at Radiance by more than I like."
Now that he was alert again, Daniel noticed shoots that'd risen from soil seared down several feet when the Goldenfels' High Drives failed. They were curling against the outrigger, inserting suckers into broken seams. And there was a colony of quarter-inch insectoids living in the same outrigger! Goodness, where there was life, there was hope.
Not that there was a great deal of hope for those examples, particularly the tiny animals, unless they could breathe vacuum; but it was a good principle to keep in mind. To continue to keep in mind.
"I thought that the sails drove us in the Matrix," Adele said. Her eyes were on the gaping hole melted in the belly plates when a High Drive motor spewed antimatter into a normal atmosphere.
The damage was impressive enough to draw attention, that was for sure. Nickel-steel icicles hung down in a three-foot circle. A patch of pink structural plastic glued to the inner surface of the hull closed the hole. The patch was sturdier than it looked, but nobody, least of all Daniel Leary, would pretend to be happy with the situation.
"The sails only give us direction in the Matrix," Daniel explained, thinking as he spoke that if there'd been time, a cap of sheet metal for this crater and the eleven like it would've been a good investment against when they got into action. A plasma bolt would turn the plastic into a chemical explosive. . . . "We have only the momentum we start with when we enter other universes. The constants differ so that our apparent location in relation to the sidereal universe may change very quickly, but we can't add real velocity while we're in a bubble universe of our own."
He looked at Adele. "I don't mean to sound gloomy," he said. "If I didn't think the plan was workable, I wouldn't attempt it."
Adele looked amused. "Daniel," she said, "can you predict with certainty everything that's going to happen in the course of this operation?"
He drew back as though she'd slapped him. "No," he said in a reserved tone. "Of course I can't, not a fraction of the events. I hope to react properly, with the aid of a skilled crew. Granting that we'll be undermanned, of course."
"Since many of the events are unpredictable . . . ," Adele continued. Daniel could hear laughter bubbling under her words but for the life of him he couldn't understand why. "Then it's quite possible that most of them, maybe all of them, will turn out for the best, isn't it?"
"Well, yes," Daniel agreed. "That's of course what I'm hoping for, though I won't claim I expect matters to work out that way."
"Daniel," Adele said softly, "a person like you is never going to believe that a plan with so many variables is certainly unworkable. If the goal is important enough, you're going to attempt it. And every one of us in the crew is going to join you willingly because you're our captain."
She smiled, though the curve of mouth was as hard as a thruster nozzle. "And because you're Daniel Leary," she added.
Daniel laughed and linked arms with her. "Let's go back to the Sissie," he said. "I want to review the operation again with Mr. Chewning, and I'd like you to be there for the code briefing."
He began to whistle a snatch of "The Streets of Balshazzar," "When I was a young man. . . ."
But after all, while there's life there's hope.
"It's first-rate equipment," Daniel said through his two-way link with Adele. "No question about that—and Fleet Standard, too, not commercial crap. Well, not that Alliance commercial equipment is all bad. The trouble is that it's not what I'm familiar with. Do you find that also, Adele?"
Adele pursed her lips, wondering how to respond. With the truth, she supposed; it was the choice she invariably made, and when speaking to Daniel there wouldn't be negative repercussions. Still, she could shade her answer. . . .
"Well, this is a new system to me, of course," she said, "but I've configured it to emulate my handheld. There was plenty of time for that. And, ah, thank you again for allowing me to use a station here on the bridge. I suppose it was for security that the, the Alliance kept the signals room separate, but I wouldn't be comfortable like that."
When Adele was working she was oblivious of everything going on around her—including, as she'd proved in the past, combat damage that made the Princess Cecile whip like a gavotting dancer. Nonetheless she preferred to be here on the open bridge instead of off in the signals compartment, even though most of her education and working hours had been in rooms and carrels where she was utterly alone.
She had a family, now, her fellow RCN spacers. She liked being with them, particularly when she was likely to die at any moment.
The Goldenfels' bridge was much larger than that of the Princess Cecile. A subordinate console was attached back-to-back with each primary position so that a junior specialist could echo the actions of the officer at each station. The exception was the command console, standing in solitary state in the center of the compartment.
There were bridge stations for a Navigator, a Third Lieutenant, and a commissioned Engineering Officer. None of those personnel existed in the Princess Cecile's crew, let alone the rump which Daniel had transferred with him to the Goldenfels. Adele was at the Navigator's console. She'd had no difficulty in patching the full capacity of the vessel's signals suite to it.
"Six, this is Six-One," said Midshipman Vesey from the Battle Direction Center. She was using the command channel instead of a two-way pair, though that wouldn't have mattered to Adele, who routinely accessed all commo on the Princess Cecile and now on the Goldenfels as well. "All personnel are present or accounted for. Over."
Under the circumstances that meant "present" since none of the personnel assigned to the Goldenfels were on leave, sick, or on detached duty. Vesey was following the form. That was proper at any time and inevitable now that the midshipman had become executive officer of a ship far larger than the corvette to which she'd signed on.
The Goldenfels' present crew was eighty-six personnel, which included seventeen formerly-Alliance riggers who'd asked to be taken on. Some had been captured when the Princess Cecile arrived, but ten had come out of the bush when they realized the situation. Spacers were by definition a transient lot. Even naval vessels ordinarily were crewed by people from a dozen independent planets, and the populations of some of the Alliance's client states were anything but pleased to serve Guarantor Porra.
Even so the freighter was undercrewed, but Daniel said the situation was satisfactory. It wouldn't be a long voyage, after all.
"Thank you, Mistress Vesey," Daniel said. "Break. Power room, report."
"Power Room reporting all green," Pasternak replied. "Anyway, there's nothing more I can do to turn this crippled pig into a starship. Four out."
"Roger, Mr. Pasternak," Daniel said. From where Adele sat she could see Daniel's fingers moving on his keyboard, shifting one display into the next. His face looked as calm as the statue of a saint. "Break. Princess Cecile, this is Goldenfels Six. What is your condition, over?"
Sun was at the gunnery station, leaving Dorst to handle the Princess Cecile's plasma cannon. That wasn't a bad situation. The midshipman lacked Sun's experience, but he had a natural gift for weapons and—perhaps more important—had shown himself completely unflappable.
Chief Missileer Betts had remained aboard the Princess Cecile. Daniel would control the Goldenfels' missiles himself. The alternative would've required Chewning to act as the corvette's missileer, and all he knew how to do was rubberstamp the attack board's solutions—a near guarantee of failure. There was as much art to missile-slinging as there was to astrogation, Adele knew from listening to crewmen talk; and she knew also that Betts himself considered Daniel a master of that art.
Of course the Princess Cecile wouldn't be in a position where she needed her missiles if things went as planned, but the chance of that happening wasn't even worth a laugh. Thinking of the possibility of perfection, Adele chuckled.
"Goldenfels Six, this is Sissie Six," said Mr. Chewning. He sounded earnest and a little nervous, like a small child presenting his class project. "Sir, the Princess Cecile is ready to lift and proceed to the rendezvous location. Over."
Daniel had drafted the majority of the corvette's riggers to his new command, but Chewning had the relatively simple task of taking the Princess Cecile to an orbit above an uninhabited—but marginally habitable—planet at roughly a day's voyage from Radiance. The Sissie's High Drive installation was undamaged, so even without Daniel's expertly-nuanced astrogation and Woetjans and her full team to execute the details, the Princess Cecile should be in position long before the Goldenfels arrived.
"Roger, Sissie Six," Daniel said. "I hope we'll see you again in approximately ten days. Good luck to you and your crew, Mr. Chewning. Goldenfels Six out."
"Good luck and good hunting, sir!" Chewning replied. "Sissie Six out!"
Daniel took a deep breath and shook himself in his harness. He saw Adele looking at him and gave her a thumbs-up, then returned his attention to his display.
"Ship, this is Six," he said over the intercom. "Prepare for lift-off. Lighting thrusters—" his finger stabbed "—now!"
Adele leaned back in her acceleration couch as the plasma thrusters lit with a bone-deep growl. She wouldn't see solid ground again till the Goldenfels reached the Radiance system.
She grinned again. If then.