David Drake - When the Tide Rises

"Four Control, this is theVictoria Luise," Adele said. She was keeping the exchange boringly formal, hoping that would lull any concerns of theSiegfried 's crew. "We were directed here from Tadzhik where theHildebrandt replaced us as guard ship. We're to be surveyed preparatory to sale or salvage, over."

Adele had set up the search for targets on the ground, but Rene was running it from the console to her right. She watched the results as a sidebar inset onto her main display, but she found no need to interfere or even comment. Rene was grading ships according to their state of readiness; those coded red were capable of lifting off in thirty minutes. There were forty in that category in the northern cluster, three at the south pole, and none in the mid-latitude grouping.

"Victoria Luise, hold one," the duty signaler said.

The lengthening pause suited Adele's-Daniel's-purposes even better than empty conversation. TheVictoria Luise had been stationed on Tadzhik briefly, but that'd been eighteen standard years earlier. If theSiegfried 's officers searched the records, they'd learn that just as Adele had done. It'd confuse them, but the natural assumption would be that the records were wrong.

"Victoria Luise," said a forceful male voice, "this is Castle Four Control. We have no record of you being authorized to land here. Hold in orbit until we receive instructions from Pleasaunce Control, over."

The cruiser's rig was coming down in a chorus of metallic shrieks, rattles and clangs. There was more noise than usual so far as Adele's experience went, since theLadouceur had twelve rings of antennas instead of the corvette's six. Even a thin atmosphere like that of Castle Four would strip away the rigging unless it'd been furled, folded, and locked to the hull before the vessel started its descent.

Raising and lowering the sails was a completely automated process if everything worked as it was supposed to-which of course it never did. The riggers were outside to splice broken cables, free frozen joints, and all the thousand other ways machinery that'd been exposed to vacuum and the rigors of alien universes might choose to fail. Normally both watches would be on the hull to get the rig in quickly in preparation for landing.

Though theLadouceur had a full crew of nearly four hundred on this voyage, only a short crew of riggers was at work. The remainder of the personnel waited in the three entry holds, formed into boarding parties. After the cruiser landed, they'd capture Alliance-flag vessels and sail them back to Pelosi.

"Four Control, please," said Adele. Daniel had briefed her on what to say at this juncture; she hoped she could rattle it off in a believable fashion. "That'll takehours with the planets in opposition like this. We don't have enough reaction mass to hold a powered orbit for that long, not and land besides. Can't you give us clearance and we can work the details out later, over?"

Besides the racket the antennas and yards made, Adele felt a low rumble of quite different character. Sun was at the gunnery console, swinging the dorsal turret and elevating the 6-inch guns. According to plan, the Port Three main course would remain set to hide the turret from the guard ship's view until it was time for the guns to go into action.

"Negative, Victoria Luise!" thundered the battleship's spokesman. He was obvious a senior officer. "You are not, I repeat not, cleared to land. If you're short of reaction mass, that's nobody's fault but your own. A few hours of weightlessness isn't going to kill you. Four Control over!"

Daniel had split his screen. The left half was an attack board, while on the right he oversaw the boarding party assignments. Rene passed to Blantyre information on the cargos of the ships ready to lift on short notice; Blantyre then chose and briefed the section that would capture the vessel, usually half a dozen spacers under a petty officer who at least in theory could program an astrogational computer.

"Four Control," Adele said primly, "I must protest. This is mere harassment. I demand to speak to your superior officer, over!"

"You dickheaded landsman, you're speaking to Captain William Dunn!" the voice snarled. "Ihaveno superior this side of Pleasaunce, and it's for Pleasaunce to respond that you're bloody well going to wait. Four Control out!"

Blantyre had assigned the last of the intended prizes: the ten-thousand tonne grain shipStar of Acapulco. Captain Hoppler himself, with twenty-four spacers whom he'd commanded on theSacred Independence, was to capture and sail the big ship home.

Daniel straightened, shrank down the assignments board, and grinned broadly toward Adele. She nodded to his miniature image in the upper register of her display.

"Ship," called Daniel over the intercom. "Prepare to launch missiles!"

"Firing four!" said Daniel, mashing his thumb down on the Execute button. On theLadouceur the switch itself was virtual but the cage over it was physical and spring-loaded; it flopped back when it was released.

As a jet of live steam hammered the first missile out of its tube, Daniel used his left hand to furl the Port 3 main course and rotate the yard in line with the antenna. If the sail jammed instead of furling, he'd fold the antenna anyway rather than wait for riggers to clear the problem: all the riggers were supposed to be within the hull.

If the antenna jammed also, the first plasma bolt would clear a path for the second and future rounds. TheLadouceur could suffer much worse damage than losing a single antenna and he'd still consider it a cheap victory.

The second missile banged out five seconds after the first. That was a shorter separation than he'd have allowed in thePrincess Cecile or a converted freighter like theSacred Independence, but the cruiser's mass and the stiffness of a warship's hull meant the launch of five tons of steel and reaction mass didn't seriously twist the vessel.

He glanced toward Sun at the gunnery console, his right hand poised over the Execute key. "Officer Sun, you may fire when you bear," he said. It was barely possible that nobody aboard theSiegfried had noticed that the 'Victoria Luise' was launching missiles, but theywould notice six-inch plasma bolts even if they were sound asleep.

Daniel'd planned to bring theLadouceur from Pelosi to the Castle System in six days, and he'd believed that theSissie could've done it in five. The latter was probably true, but the cruiser'd taken seven.

Now that he had a moment to consider, he decided that they'd made a pretty good run at that. Not only was the whole crew new to the ship, always a recipe for error and confusion, theLadouceur 's folding antennas were like nothing most of the riggers would've ever seen before.

The ship rang with the third missile's launch. Additional missiles were rumbling down the tracks from the magazine. It normally took forty-five seconds to reload, but Daniel was shaving time by starting rounds on the way before the tubes were empty. That'd mean a serious problem if he had to abort the launch; there was no mechanism for returning missiles to the magazine except by chocking them, unclamping the harness, and levering the massive weapons back up the rollers with pry bars.

On the other hand, he'd only abort the launch if there was a serious problem to begin with. Being able to send out a follow-up salvo thirty seconds sooner could be well worth that risk.

The fourth missile launched with the same hammer-on-anvil crash as the others. The whole process, beginning to end, had taken only thirty seconds. Daniel knew that, but it felt like a day spent at Navy House, waiting for a clerk tomaybe, please the Gods, call the number of his chit.

The dorsal turret fired, a spaced CLANG! CLANG! much sharper than the missile launches, though a layman might not've made a distinction. Adele'd highlighted the communications antennas that the guard ship was using, a cluster near the bow. That was Sun's aiming point. The range was too long for even six-inch bolts to penetrate a battleship's plating, but scouring off the antennas would delay theSiegfried 's report to Pleasaunce Control.