CHAPTER 31

Daniel wished he had time to strip off his rigging suit, but the best he could do for the time being was to unlock his helmet and twist it to release as he threw himself down at the command console. A quick shuffle through the displays showed him that things were as well as could be expected: they were accelerating at 1.4 gravities, as much as the High Drive could manage when the corvette was so heavily loaded. Woetjans' riggers had begun setting the sails according to plan, now that the Princess Cecile was unmasked as fully operational.

The Bluecher had launched a spread of twelve missiles, a full salvo, which Daniel supposed he should take as flattering. Captain Semmes thought so well of the Goldenfels' commander that he was using all available force to crush what on the face of it was the crippled remnant of an initially weak opponent. Perhaps when all this was over, it would give Daniel a warm feeling; what he saw now was certain destruction accelerating toward them at 12 Gees.

Daniel punched a three-stroke combination into his keyboard, triggering the complex program of commands he'd prepared aboard the Goldenfels before abandoning her. Missiles launched from both the freighter's tubes, and her thrusters lit at full power. The missile courses were vague approximations, but that wouldn't be certain to the Bluecher till they burned out.

He doubted that either of those things were going to befuddle Semmes, but they provided a few more factors on the Alliance commander's plate. Though Semmes seemed to have all the cards from where Daniel sat on the other side of the table, he knew that things would look different on the bridge of the Bluecher.

Betts had been alone on the Sissie's bridge until the regular crew arrived from the Goldenfels; Chewning and Dorst had been handling gunnery and command duties from their usual station in the Battle Center.

Sun, still wearing his airsuit, was at the gunnery console now, but the Sissie's four 4-inch plasma cannon couldn't significantly affect the oncoming missiles. There was no hope for escape save into the Matrix, and that was only a momentary bolthole. The corvette didn't have enough way on to get any significant distance from their present location, no matter how many times their relative velocity was multiplied.

"Ship, this is Six," Daniel said. "We're entering the Matrix—"

His left hand shut off the High Drive; his right thrust two fingers down hard to initiate the entry sequence. A complex charge built on the Princess Cecile's hull, acting both as pressure and a lubricant, forcing and allowing the vessel to slip from sidereal space into the complex of other space-times.

"—now."

To those aboard the Princess Cecile, it was as if time dragged on at an agonizing crawl during which the individual atoms of their beings turned inside out. In fact time was moving just as fast as it ever did, but within the bubble of special space-time movement slowed. The actual process of insertion into or extraction from the Matrix took anywhere from thirty seconds to a minute, depending on the energy gradients involved.

And it didn't affect the Bluecher's missiles. Daniel had what was either a Matrix hallucination or a flashback to the time he was one with the Tree on New Delphi: the missiles launched on initially diverging courses which then curved back toward intersection; their twin High Drive motors reaching burn-out and shutting down as each round split into three segments, moving at .6 C and packing so much kinetic energy that a thermonuclear warhead would add complexity without increasing the effect of a hit; the segments crisscrossing the volume of space containing the Goldenfels and the Princess Cecile.

He'd hoped the Goldenfels would successfully make the transition into the Matrix where its track would at least be a distraction for Captain Semmes when he came hunting the Sissie. The freighter'd begun her programmed sequence at the same time as the corvette did, but the bigger vessel still wallowed in normal space when segments of two Alliance missiles plunged into her.

For an instant the Goldenfels looked like a barbell, untouched amidships but her bow and stern ionized by the impacts. Then the shockwaves met in the center and left nothing but an expanding fireball.

The vision faded, or the hallucination. Daniel blinked. For a moment he couldn't see the numbers cascading across his display as he ran course calculations.

A ship is merely a tool to be used, and if she breaks in use, well, that's part of life. Besides, the Goldenfels was an Alliance vessel, never formally taken into RCN service.

But for a short while Lieutenant Daniel Leary had commanded her. She'd served him and Cinnabar well during that time, and against all logic he regretted her loss. Though maybe it was only hallucination. . . . 

Daniel took a deep breath. He'd seen/felt/imagined a segment of missile passing through the Princess Cecile, a quartering shot that struck on the starboard counter and passed out on the port bow. The missile and the corvette didn't exist in quite the same space-time simultaneously, but the almost-contact had made Daniel shiver for reasons that weren't entirely psychological.

He focused on his display. The astrogational computer had calculated where the Princess Cecile was in sidereal space. Daniel sighed. He'd entered the Matrix a good minute and a half sooner than he'd intended to. On a hunch, he supposed; and he'd been correct, that flashing missile would assuredly have vaporized the corvette if he'd been even a few seconds slower. Even so, the Sissie would have to return to the sidereal universe very soon to get up to useful velocities if they were to have any real hope of escape.

The truth was, Captain Semmes was as good as Daniel Leary was, and the Bluecher was far superior in all respects to the Princess Cecile. Daniel didn't really see how the contest was going to have a positive ending, but even the best commanders make mistakes. If Semmes made the first one, the Sissie could capitalize on it to escape. And if Daniel Leary made the mistake, well—

He grinned as he locked his helmet on again and rose from the console.

—it was hard to imagine that making their present situation worse. He supposed it was liberating, knowing that he wouldn't have to blame himself for a bad outcome. Of course he probably wouldn't have long for breast-beating anyway, given the velocities at which missiles travelled.

"Ship, this is Six," he said, starting for the airlock. "I'm going out to view the Matrix and adjust our plotted course from the hull. Mr. Chewning, you're in command of the ship, but I will be conning us through the semaphore system. Do you have any questions, over?"

Daniel wanted to rub his eyes, but it was too late—he'd closed his helmet. He was very tired, tired to the point that he felt disassociated from his body, but that wasn't a wholly bad thing. The Matrix seemed closer when his mind could float in it.

"Aye aye, sir," said Chewing, stolid and cheerful again. "Good hunting, over." 

"What I'm hunting for, Mr. Chewning," Daniel said as he closed the airlock, "is a way out of this mess. Over."

"Roger, sir," said Chewning. "And I speak for all the crew when I say good hunting. Out." 

Daniel heard general laughter as he shut off his intercom to go out on the hull. Then the only laughter remaining was his own.

The great danger of working on the hull of a ship in the Matrix was that you'd lose your grip and sail off into alien space-times, alone for eternity. It was the riggers' great fear, the one they'd only talk about when they were very drunk.

Adele walked across the hull with her left hand on the safety cord, her boots going click-click-click as the small magnets in the soles mated with the steel hull plating. She was careful because she was always careful doing things she wasn't very good at, but she wasn't especially afraid.

Death hadn't frightened Adele since the day she learned her whole family had been executed. As for the manner of her death, the part that seemed to bother other people particularly—Adele had always felt apart from the people around her. The irony of becoming Adele Mundy, Bubble Universe, rather amused her. Not that she wanted that to happen.

Daniel stood at a semaphore platform between the first and second antennas of the dorsal row. The maincourses of both were furled, but the topsails and the sails above the topsails—Adele instinctively reached for her data unit to check the name, then remembered she didn't and didn't dare carry it here—stretched from the pressure of Casimir radiation bearing on them. Above, filling everything beyond the bubble of the Princess Cecile and the crew aboard her, was the pulsing, sullen, magnificence of the Matrix—of all worlds and all times, pressing in on the starship which had intruded on them for this brief instant.

Daniel's gauntleted fingers moved on the controls while his face remained turned to the patterns above. A rigger moved to the foremost mast and began to climb with swift hand-over-hand. A latch had stuck or a cable was fouled; a human being was going aloft to free it so that another sail could billow out to match those Adele saw spreading at the peaks of the five masts behind it in the row.

She stepped forward, placing herself across the semaphore stand from Daniel; there he would see her but she'd remain out of his way. Catching the motion or perhaps feeling the tremble of her boots on the hull, he looked toward Adele and grinned through the heavy faceplate of his rigging suit.

Daniel motioned her forward, then touched his helmet to hers. Pointing toward the heavens with his right arm, he said, "There's a discontinuity there that we're following." His voice distant but very clear as it rang through the two helmets. "I don't suppose you see it . . . ?"

But obviously he hoped she did. Well, Adele thought she could make a librarian out of Daniel, but the chance of him making her an astrogator was something below the likelihood that she'd become Speaker of the Cinnabar Senate.

Nonetheless she looked upward, trying to follow the sweep of Daniel's arm. To her, looking into the Matrix was like staring at a well-stirred vanilla pudding—which was glowing brightly besides.

"I'm afraid I don't, Daniel," she said apologetically. It was something that mattered a great deal to him, and he doubtless regretted that it meant nothing whatever to her. "Is it a faster way home than, than another way would be?"

"Ah?" he said in puzzlement. "Oh, I see what you mean. It's a good passage at that, better in this direction than the other, to tell the truth. But what we're actually doing is retracing the route by which we came from Radiance to the rendezvous point. There we'll reenter normal space for the first time, build up speed, and then strike for Todos Santos."

He paused, eyeing the quivering splendor for a moment in silence. Then he bent into contact with Adele again and went on, "I'm hoping that Captain Semmes will lose our new course in our backtrail. There's so much traffic into Radiance that only God Himself could follow us on a cold track outbound."

He coughed and added, "And God, of course, is on the side of Cinnabar."

"Of course," Adele said without emphasis. She assumed Daniel was joking—while religion wasn't an acceptable subject of conversation in the RCN, she'd certainly never known him to visit a temple—but his assurance of the rightness of the RCN was at least very close to religious faith. Daniel was a sophisticated man in many respects, but there were parts of him that were frankly childish.

Of course, if the God Adele didn't believe in had provided the RCN with commanders like Daniel Leary, then he was correct in his faith.

"What I'd really like to do would be to load reaction mass on Radiance," he continued, "but at this point I don't trust the Commonwealth government to accept the story that the Sissie is a private yacht."

He chuckled; Adele heard the sound as a distant grunting.

"Though in fact that's just what we are, you know."

As Daniel talked, he continued to watch the Matrix. He made a slight adjustment at the semaphore. Adele didn't see any change in the sails from where she stood, but the glowing pudding overhead began slowly to rotate around the corvette's axis, a motion distinct from the streaks which seemed to move longitudinally.

"Will we be all right?" Adele asked. She hoped she didn't sound frightened; she wasn't, after all, she was just curious. What happened if they ran out of reaction mass?

"Oh, heavens, yes," Daniel said. "Only we're down to 58%, which means we'll have to make at least one landfall before we reach Todos Santos."

He coughed and continued, speaking with a degree of reserve, "Chewning did a fine job, a very professional job, but instead of orbiting at the rendezvous point, he kept the power on to maintain artificial gravity. He's experienced, but he'd never seen action before. I don't think I sufficiently emphasized to him that in war the only things you can count on are the ones you hold in your hand."

"Daniel?" Adele said. He'd brought it up himself, noting that the Sissie was a private yacht. "Have you considered what will happen if the Commonwealth government lodges a formal complaint? We're not at war with the Alliance, not officially, and very likely there were Commonwealth citizens killed at Lorenz Base also."

This wasn't something she wanted to talk about, but she felt she had to. There were no secrets within a starship, especially a small ship like the Princess Cecile carrying thirty-odd crew in addition to her Table of Organization. Out here on the hull, though, no one could overhear what she had to say.

"Yes," said Daniel. "That what we did was technically piracy, you mean?"

He snorted, then went on, "Call a spade a spade—it was piracy, of course. I thought about the fact that the Goldenfels rather than a Cinnabar-registered ship made the attack, but the story'll get out after we dock. Assuming matters go as we hope they will in the Radiance system and afterwards, of course, so that we do get back."

Daniel looked at the heavens, reached for the semaphore control, and brought his hand back without touching it. He leaned his helmet against hers and said, "Adele, I never had the stomach for politics, but Speaker Leary's son isn't going to grow up without knowing how the game's played. I understand very well that the best result so far as the government of Cinnabar is concerned would be if the Princess Cecile vanished without a trace and the attack on Lorenz Base remained a mystery. Guarantor Porra would be more than happy to suppress the news, I'm sure. But . . ."

He turned his face upward again, though this time Adele was by no means sure it was anything within the Matrix that Daniel was focusing on. Touching her helmet again, he said, "Adele, every soul aboard the Princess Cecile trusts me to get them home. I don't know that I'm going to succeed—our trick of backtracking wouldn't have fooled me, and I don't expect it'll fool Captain Semmes either. But I owe the Sissies more than I owe Cinnabar, and by God! if I fail them, it won't be for want of trying."

"No," said Adele. "Nobody who knows you would imagine anything else, Daniel."

And just maybe, God was on the side of Cinnabar.