David Drake - When the Tide Rises

Whereas Rene Cazelet-given access but without training-was sorting and copying Alliance files with bright enthusiasm. "Oh, mistress, this is amazing!" he said. "They're all here, and look! The second battlecruiser isn't theMackensenasour files say, it's the Stosch!"

"That's correct," Adele said, "but we're not going to inform Diamondia of that."

"We're not?" Cazelet said, raising his eyes in puzzlement. He was trying to see through the display instead of looking at her imageon the display. "Why, mistress? Shouldn't they correct their files?"

"Yes," said Adele, "in theory; but the information doesn't have tactical significance because the two ships are of equivalent force. Whereas if we transmit it back to Diamondia Control, the enemy may intercept the message and realize that we've entered their communications system. Thatcould have tactical significance."

"Oh," said Cazelet. "Yes, of course. I'm sorry, I should've seen that."

"You may reasonably think that the Alliance forces in the Jewel System are barely competent to speak to one another, let alone intercept our communications," Adele went on with a hard smile. "But because we know our business, we won't take a chance that they don't have anybody who does."

"But this is just wonderful!"Cazelet said, bubbling again."Mistress, you're a genius, just as Granna says!"

"You did the work, Rene," Adele said.

She might've said something further, but Daniel's voice announced, "Ship, this is Six. We will insert into the Matrix in thirty, that's three-zero, seconds. Next stop, Pelosi, shipmates!"

It was probably as well that Adele had been interrupted. Cazelet's enthusiasm was an entirely good thing, and he deserved to be pleased after such an impressive first essay into signals intelligence.

But even though Adele wasn't a commissioned officer, she'd spent enough time in the RCN to understand what the list they'd just called up meant: two battleships, two battlecruisers, four heavy cruisers, four light cruisers, six destroyers and six sloops.

It meant certain doom for Admiral James and his squadron unless they got a considerable helping hand.

Adele was vaguely aware of the bustle as thePrincess Cecile prepared to extract from the Matrix, but she continued to pore over information she'd winnowed from the files of Torregrossa Brothers. The less she thought about the details of star travel, the happier-the less unhappy-she was.

"Extraction!" the intercom said enthusiastically. Adele felt her body turn inside-out as the light around her changed. The communications screen that she'd imbedded in the upper left quadrant of her display changed from a pearly blur to a web of color-coded traffic; she expanded it to the upper two-thirds of the total volume, shrinking everything else to a pair of bars across the bottom.

"Ship, this is Five," said Lieutenant Vesey from the Battle Direction Center. "I'd like you all to know that Captain Leary conned us by dead reckoning from Diamondia to within 153,000 miles of the surface of Pelosi, without a single extraction to check his calculations. When you next go on liberty around Harbor Three, you tell people that. And tell them you're Sissies! Five out!"

There were cheers,

Vesey's learning people skills, Adele thought. She's always been a good astrogator, but now she's learning to lead. Learning from the best, of course.

Adele concentrated on the message traffic and the ships on and around Pelosi.

Her wands flickered. There was so much… Making an instant decision she said, "Midshipman Cory, take over the commo duties, I'm busy."

That probably wasn't the right way to delegate, but she wasvery busy.

"Roger, Signals," Cory said. His voice threatened to crack but settled down. "Navigation out."

The Bagarian navy-the Naval Force of the Independent Republic of Bagaria-was in Morning Harbor on Pelosi, with the cruiserSacred Independence orbiting the planet as a guard ship. At any rate theIndependence was supposed to be on guard. Nobody aboard her appeared to be in the least concerned that a warship had just extracted in her immediate vicinity.

Calling theIndependence, a 5,000 ton freighter from the Cinnabar-Kostroma run, a warship was stretching a point as well. When the rebellion broke out, the rebel government bought and converted her by the addition of plasma cannon-six 4-inch guns and a pair of the 10-cm Alliance equivalents-and adapting two cargo holds to carry missiles. Her full capacity was ninety-six missiles, but there were only twenty-one in her magazines.

That is, twenty-one missiles according to the manifest. Even without Master Torregrossa's warning, Adele had been on enough fringe planets to suspect the manifest might've been falsified to put money into a minister's pocket.

"Signals, what's the status of the guard ship?" Daniel demanded, his voice taut. "I haven't received a challenge, over."

"There's no challenge," Adele said as her fingers began to sort data from the ships in harbor below. "They're not on alert. A rating on the bridge noticed us appear, but the officer of the watch-who was sleeping-threatened to flog the fellow if he bothered him again."

The largest ship in the excellent natural harbor-Morning City was built on a lake of 700,000 acres with a crenellated shoreline-was 6,000 tons, another long-haul freighter. It'd been bought on Elgato, where it was due to be scrapped, and had become theGeneralissima DeMarce. Besides a claimed eleven missiles, it was armed with four 4-inch guns and a pair of 15-cm weapons.

Adele sneered. These last would shake theDeMarce 's rusty plates apart if they were ever fired. Adele had personal experience of what the recoil of heavy plasma cannon did to a freighter's frames, and in that case the ship had been strengthened to take the weapons.

A number of small craft ranging from a hundred and fifty tons to nearly a thousand had been assigned to the Bagarian navy. None of them carried plasma cannon or missiles, though they probably mounted baskets of free-flight 8-inch rockets for protection against pirates… or for that matter, for piracy. At short range the rockets' high explosive heads could dismast a ship and shred its sails, leaving it helpless and easily boarded.

Adele gathered particulars on the light craft, but optical examination was the only way to be sure of their armament and equipment. For that task her skills paled into insignificance beside Daniel's. Regardless of detail, the ships were a poor lot.

There was one more vessel of interest in Morning Harbor, and it was the most interesting of all. Adele frowned when her second attempt to enter its main computer failed because the configuration wasn't what she'd expected. The third time was the charm, but "Signals, there's an RCN light cruiser in harbor below," Daniel said in the same terse, metallic voice as when he'd queried her about the guard ship. "I need complete information on it, over."

Because she was irritated at Daniel prodding her, Adele dumped to the command console the entire contents of the cruiser's log. It would be as useless to Daniel as thirty tons of coal to someone who wanted a diamond.

Then, because even irritation couldn't prevent her from doing her duty, she said, "The ship's the Alliance cruiserVictoria Luise, assigned to the Bagarian Cluster Command. Captain Seward took the Bagarian, ah, navy to Schumer's World, and the planet revolted from the Alliance. The rebels captured theVictoria Luise on the ground and Seward brought it away with him when he returned here."

"That's a Financier Class light cruiser from the RCN, Adele," said Daniel in a tone of delighted wonder. "I'd have thought that the last one of those'd been scraped before you or I were born. The Alliance must've captured her, and of course the Protectorate Service-well, that's our term, the Cluster Commands as the Alliance calls them-that's where you'd find old foreign-built ships. We're looking at history, by theGodswe are."