David Drake - When the Tide Rises

"Commander Leary always allows a slight gap when he switches propulsion modes, Cazelet," Adele said on the link she'd set up with the man at the jumpseat on the rear of her console. "That way a late surge from the one he's shutting down doesn't double the strain on the ship needlessly."

She winced as she heard herself. Adele knew she had a tendency to be pedantic, but this wasabsurd. And why was she bragging about her knowledge of shipboard life to this boy?

He wasn't really a boy. At 24, Cazelet was older than Daniel had been when they met on Kostroma.

"I'd wondered," Cazelet said, "because Captain Leary is clearly skillful enough to match the commands more closely than he chose to do. I hadn't thought about the possibility of mechanical failure."

He cleared his throat. Adele had a miniature of Cazelet's face on the bottom of her display; his brow furrowed as his mind worked with a question.

"Ah, Lady Mundy, I don't mean to be forward…," he said. "But I'd be much more comfortable if you called me Rene. It wouldn't be a breach of naval discipline because I'm not a member of the RCN. Ah… But of course whateveryouprefer is fine with me. Over."

Adele started to speak, then closed her mouth. She didn't know how she felt about the request.

She snorted. She'd noticed that lawyers, when asked questions which didn't have clear answers, always said, "No." That gave her a course of action in her own similar circumstances.

"All right, Rene," she said. "Now that the thrusters aren't spreading static across the whole RF spectrum, I'll show you how to identify the ships in the Alliance squadron."

She pursed her lips. "And you'd best call me Mundy," she added. "I'm not Lady Mundy in my own mind-or many other people's, I'm confident. Ah, or Adele, I suppose. Though generally only Daniel calls me that. In private."

"Thank you," Cazelet said. "Ah, since we're on a private channel-thank you, Adele."

"Yes," said Adele, working to keep her mind as neutral as the syllable. "I'm giving you control of the display, now."

She didn't, of course; she'd merely enabled the Training facility to allow Rene temporary access until she made an input herself. The jumpseat positions were intended to train ordinary spacers striking for a specialist rating and, secondarily, as backup in case something happened to the assigned officer. Ordinarily the rear controls were locked whenever the console proper was occupied.

To Adele's surprise, the first thing Rene did was call up the existing Order of Battle for the Alliance squadron, the data gathered by Naval Intelligence officers on Admiral James' staff. Face blank, she said, "I suspect that this was gathered mostly through visual identifications. We'll cross-check it using signals intelligence. I believe signals provide more accurate data than optical recognition, but I recognize that there can be a difference of opinion on the matter."

Adele cleared her throat. They couldn't look at one another directly through the shimmering holographic display, but she'd set a real-time image of Rene's face on her screen-and he'd done the same with hers. She'd expected the boy to interrupt with questions-nervous or pushy, unwelcome in either instance. He said nothing, merely waiting expectantly.

Ordinarily Tovera'd be in the jumpseat, just as Daniel's servant Hogg sat on his. Today she sat behind Cory at the navigation console, looking across the compartment at Adele. Her face had no more expression than the muzzle of a gun has.

"First," said Adele, "lock onto the nearest Alliance communications transponder."

The distance between Diamondia and the Alliance base was nearly 800 million miles, and Z3 would sometimes be on the other side of Zmargadine from ships that needed to communicate with their headquarters. Admiral Guphill had deployed a constellation of communications transceivers so that his forces could communicate in the event the RCN force tried to cut off a separated element.

Adele expected Rene to ask where to start, but he immediately went to work on his own. Instead of going to a sector which he'd memorized against need and setting the corvette's laser communicator to seek-which is what Adele herself would've done-he went into the database, found the listing of orbits, and entered the nearest manually.

It was more of a textbook solution than Adele's was, but it was adequately quick. It could've been duplicated by anybody aboard theSissie -if someone had told them what to do.

Rene locked one of the laser heads on the satellite; it'd remain connected despite the motion of both corvette and satellite. If the head's own line of sight to the target were blocked, it'd hand off to another head. "Ready, Adele," he said.

"All right, Cazelet," Adele said. "Enter the satellite by emulating an Alliance ship asking for an automated communications check."

"Yes, mistress," he said. She was subconsciously aware of the buzz of the High Drive and the chatter on intra-ship communications channels-all of which passed through her station. The corvette was building velocity in sidereal space before inserting into the Matrix. "I'll be entering as theStein."

"Go ahead," said Adele. Cazelet hadn't asked permission, but he'd given her the opportunity to overrule him if she chose. Nor had he asked her for the cruiser's coded handshake: he'd apparently captured it himself from the BDC when theStein signalled that she was under attack by an RCN corvette. Mistress Boileau must be very proud of her grandson.

"Here are the protocols we'll use when we get in," Adele said, opening one of her own files for Cazelet and then exiting from the console again. "We'll be looking for a ship that didn't sign out properly so that we can use its identity to enter the restricted files."

They had a wait of seven minutes for query and response. The satellite was one of a tiara of five in orbit between Diamondia and the third planet, Samphire, an airless lump of blue-gray rock which didn't have a metallic core. It many respects it would've made a better base than Z3, but reaction mass would've had to come from Zmargadine regardless. Guphill had chosen to consolidate on Z3, a cold, shifting Hell that made the Jewel System a hardship posting for the Alliance personnel.

The handshake came back. The connection with the satellite was open but thePrincess Cecile in her own guise couldn't go any farther with the operation.

"TheSteinherself didn't sign out, mistress!" Cazelet said. "I'm entering the satellite's data banks. Why, we could enter the headquarters system from here! This is amazing!"

"If we had enough time, I'd do just that," Adele said with a wry smile. "We'll be inserting in a few minutes, though. Signals to and from Z3 would take several hours."

Cazelet was navigating the satellite's internal memory, using the codes Adele had supplied. The second part of the communications handshake required randomly variable code sets which synched perfectly. Without capturing a vessel equipped with the code generator, it was impossible to duplicate them.

When a ship opened a connection and didn't close it properly, however, that connection remained open. TheStein had inserted into the Matrix without signing out. That'd happened in the heat of battle, but six other connections were open, including that of Guphill's flagship, thePleasaunce.

Most people were sloppy. Adele supposed she should feel good about that, given that in the present case the people involved were enemies whom it was the RCN's job to destroy. She found that evidence of human failure made her a little more sour than she already was, though. Oh, well.

The Alliance protocols Cazelet was using to open directories in the satellite's data bank were part of the kit which Adele had received from Mistress Sand. She'd initially wondered why they weren't more generally available to the RCN, but a little experience had taught her that most officers wouldn't have been able to use them even if they'd been trained by an expert like Adele herself.