David Drake - When the Tide Rises

Somebody'd crushed this one flat in the middle with a pair of heavy pliers. No water would flow through it to feed the thruster.

"I figure they're all like this, sir," Borries said. "This or something else as bad. Only I wanted to tell you before I started taking the rest of 'em apart."

"You did right, Borries," Daniel said. "And you did very well, Canedo."

After a momentary pause he said, "You can fix them? I'll tell Pasternak to give you technicians if you like."

"I guess Canedo and me can do it, Cap'n," the missileer said. His expression didn't look happy so much as it did anguished, but Daniel was willing to bet it was meant for a smile. "I'll tell Ship if we need help, then."

"Then I'll get out of your way, Borries," Daniel said, turning on his heel. As he started back toward the bridge, began whistling, "When I was a young man, young man, young man…"

He could either become furious at Master David Power, whose fiddle had saved him a few hundred florins in labor charges and bid fair to cost his nation a major victory; or he could smile cheerfully because his make-do crew was shaping up so nicely.

He was Daniel Leary: he smiled.

"Then I met a young girl, young girl, young girl…" he whistled.

Above Churchyard

Adele sat poised at her console. Because she used her own data unit as an interface, she wasn't handicapped when she changed from theSissie 's recently upgraded electronics to the cruiser's much older systems.

Realistically, differences in displays, input devices, and operating systems never slowed her down when she was on the track of information; not to a degree that any onlooker would've noticed it. Still, she was a conservative person and would rather have things the same than not.

"Preparing to extract from the Matrix in thirty seconds," Liu announced from the BDC.

Adele felt the quiver of charges building as theLadouceur neared the end of its short hop from the outskirts of the Churchyard System. TheIndependence andDeMarce had reached the rendezvous without difficulty; that was almost a given with Vesey and Blantyre plotting the courses. Only seven of the eleven light craft had arrived, though Daniel seemed to think they'd be sufficient. She smiled: indeed, he'd said he'd be amazed to find as many as nine.

Adele smiled more broadly; almost as broadly as what an ordinary person would call a smile. One change that she didn't in the least regret was being adopted into the RCN family. There were costs to the association, physical and mental ones both, but Daniel Leary and the RCN had saved her life. More important, they'd given her a reason to live.

"Extracting-g-g…," moaned a voice dehumanized by the process of returning to the sidereal universe. The interior lights sharpened, the displays swelled to life now that theLadouceur wasn't in a bubble universe shut off from every other human artifact, and the five turrets squealed as Sun slewed them toward real targets.

Adele didn't care what Sun did or Daniel did, and for that matter she didn't care very much about whether a missile was about to blast theLadouceur into dust and ions. Other people, friends and enemies alike, had duties for which they were responsible; that was fine. Adele Mundy would focus onher duty, which right now involved learning everything possible about Alliance ships on and about Churchyard.

TheLadouceur was 103,000 miles out from the planet and displaying very little proper motion to it. Daniel had placed them a little east to the perpendicular of Hafn Teobald, the Alliance naval base, so that Churchyard's rotation would keep the target in view for the longest possible time even if the cruiser didn't maneuver.

That was Daniel's problem; Adele's first act was to tap into the planetary network of weather satellites. That gave her day and night coverage of Churchyard's surface at a level of detail that was more than adequate for the present purposes. The system could be shut down but probably wouldn't be, at least not before she'd found another path to continuous surveillance.

With the future provided for, Adele surveyed the ships in harbor below. That hadn't beenher first priority because she knew it'd be Daniel's. He was better at optical identification than she was anyway. In this case, the electronic signatures would only confirm what the captain'd already learned.

Three freighters, one of them gutted for use as a warehouse and accommodation ship, were anchored parallel to the harbor's northern shore. In two of the six slips on the south side were a large modern destroyer, theCesare Rossarol, and the missile boatS81.

The latter was a 300-tonne vessel built to do the job for which Daniel had jury-rigged the lighter vessels in his squadron. It could carry two High Drive missiles on external mountings, and unlike the Bagarian country craft, it had full targeting equipment.

Adele'd seen enough space battles by now to know that a pair of missiles wasn't a threat to a ship which could maneuver normally; doctrine recommended use of missile boats in squadrons of six or twelve, making possible a volley which could in theory overwhelm the defenses even of a battleship. In the present case, S81 's missiles weren't mounted. A quick dip into her electronic log suggested that General Auguste, the Commander of Cluster Forces, had been using the ship as a courier to and from Conyers.

The remainder of the Bagarian squadron appeared in bits and pieces-theIndependence and a moment later theDeMarce, then three light craft, followed by two more light craft. Adele focused on entering Hafn Teobald's main database now that she was sure there were no orbiting Alliance warships, but she was glad to note on an inset that Cazelet, using the otherwise-empty console across the compartment, was keeping track of friendly vessels.

Surely the final two ships couldn't have gotten lost in the course of an intrasystem transit, could they?

Of course they could. Some of the Bagarian captains had as little astrogation experience as Signals Officer Mundy did, and they were using hardware which hadn't been checked ahead of time by Commander Leary. But with luck the ships weren't permanently lost; and anyway, Daniel'd make do. Daniel always made do.

Adele found the information she needed and forwarded it to the command console. Over a two-way link she said, "Captain, the base has a triple launcher for anti-starship missiles. There're three more missiles to reload in a bunker attached to the launching pit. The launcher's active, and it's isolated from the headquarters communications system that I can enter. I'm afraid that I'm not able to attack the launcher. Ah, electronically."

She stumbled over the thought, remembering the pit on Dunbar's World that she'd shot her way into. That wouldn't be possible here either, because theLadouceur couldn't land close enough to permit a ground assault.

Razor ribbon singing as bullets cut the tensioned strands.

Osmium pellets ricocheting from posts like streaks of neon light.

Faces framed in her sight picture.

"Signals, are you all right?" Daniel's voice was saying. "I repeat, what's the status of the two warships, over?"

"S-sorry," Adele said. "Sorry, Daniel, I… It doesn't matter, sorry. TheS81 is fully crewed and was scheduled to lift for Conyers within the hour with dispatches. TheRossarol has only a skeleton crew though it seems to be fit for operations as soon as it's manned. Over."

She'd remembered to close her speech according to RCN protocol. Good, good… but that didn't make up for the way she'd drifted into nightmare when people were depending on her.

Though Adele's left side occasionally knotted where the bullet'd hit her during the assault on Dunbar's World, the physical twinge wasn't the worst damage she'd received that night. Everything has costs, and the benefits of being part of the RCN family were worth everything she'd paid thus far-and everything she'd continue paying to the day she died.