David Drake - When the Tide Rises

They might think that if they were captured, Guarantor Porra would have them all shot out of hand in retaliation for the raid. Adele smiled faintly. She suspected that their concern was well founded.

"Mission Control," said a breathless voice on 3625kH. "This is Blackwell! We've got theJabez Croftand we're buttoning up for liftoff! Over!"

Adele's wands danced. David Blackwell, an engineer's mate from Thuer; had experience as watch officer on tramps in the Viscount Region though no formal astrogation training. In charge of six spacers, Unit 17 in Blantyre's terminology, directed to the 2300-tonne freighterJabez Croft out of Wakeland, over a half mile to the west of where Daniel'd brought theLadouceur down.

"I'm transferring your data to Control Six, Blackwell," Adele said. She sent it to Daniel with a dip of her left wand and copied Blantyre as well, since the midshipman was coordinating the boarding parties. "Prepare for liftoff, but don't leave the ground until Control Six has given you clearance."

One of the prizes lifted in the next row over from theLadouceur. Half a dozen other ships She checked herself out of habit: nine ships had already lifted, and this one made ten. The number didn't matter, but the fact that she'd been so far out in her mental tally was disquieting.

Ten prizes were already away, and two more were running up their thrusters. The operation was on schedule, though of course nobody knew how much time they really had before Alliance forces on Pleasaunce reacted. In an ideal universe it might even be days.

The universe had rarely shown itself to be ideal in Adele's experience, but the present raid was so audaciously unlikely that there wouldn't be mechanisms in place to counter it. A smile lifted the left corner of her mouth again. Daniel made rather a habit of that sort of stroke.

A plasma cannon fired in the mid distance. Adele had closed the electronic window in which she'd viewed theDieEhre Muenchens; now she opened it again and began to hopscotch through real-time imagery from captured ships, searching for one which would show her where the shooting had occurred. It seemed to be to the northwest of theLadouceur.

The ground thumped to an explosion; a piece of something banged against the cruiser's hull. It could've simply been an impeller slug, but it sounded heavier than that. Adele'd heard a lot of impeller slugs and sub-machine gun slugs and pistol slugs in the two years since she met Daniel Leary…

"Signals, it's all right," said Rene over the intercom. "It's Rasmussen and Harned, using the gun on theScarlettto make theMP5052open up. They called while you were talking to theEhre, over."

An icon pulsed in the window Adele'd opened; she expanded it with a click. Most ships trading on the fringes of the settled universe carried light armament to discourage pirates. TheScarlett, a three-thousand tonne Kostroman vessel, had an old 10-cm plasma cannon in a nose blister.

"Signals, theScarlett's deadlined because her climate control's shot," Rene explained. "Her other systems still work, though, so when theMP5052wouldn't open up to the boarders, I told Blantyre. She sent Rasmussen and Harned to her. They got the gun working, over."

"I see," said Adele. Beth Rasmussen and Richard Harned were a Power Room tech cross trained as a gunner and a very tough rigger. Perhaps the Bagarian boarding party could've handled the job, but at best they hadn't come up with the plan themselves.

Adele didn't see the expected cratering of a plasma bolt on theMP5052 's hull, but a chemical explosion had blown antennas Dorsal Two and Dorsal Three off the hull. She selected memory and ran the imagery back to before the gun'd fired.

As expected, she found that theMP5052 had mounted a basket of free-flight rockets on her spine for defensive armament instead of a gun. They'd exploded when Rasmussen put a bolt into them. Though the blast hadn't seriously damaged the hull, the ears of everybody on the freighter's A Deck would ring for a month.

Adele checked her apparatus, then made a pair of adjustments. TheMP5052 's commo system was wide open, so it was no great trick to take control of it.

"FreighterMP5052, this is the IBSLadouceur," Adele said. Her voice would be thundering through the PA system as well as on the main console. "You saw what happened to theEhre when they refused to surrender. You've had your only warning. Open your main hatch to a boarding party from the Bagarian Republic in thirty seconds, or we'll melt you to slag, over."

Could they melt a freighter to slag? Not with a low-powered four-inch gun, certainly, but she supposed Sun would find a way if she gave him his head on the subject. Regardless, it was a permissible part of her job to exaggerate for effect while speaking to an enemy.

"Mistress, they're opening up," said Rene. "Break."

He shifted circuits for the next portion of the call, informing Blantyre that the operation had been successful so she could recall Rasmussen and her bodyguard. They discussed whether the freighter was too badly damaged to lift-decided it wasn't-and shifted their attention to theAntipodes out of Carnera; the prize crew said that vessel was missing two thruster nozzles.

Adele listened to the conversation long enough to determine it was none of her concern, then returned to panicked messages from the boarding parties. She was acting as Port Control, a task well beyond her rank and rating, but Daniel was busy writing astrogation programs for the prizes.

Two more ships lifted from opposite sides of the large harbor. According to Daniel, Castle Four's loess soil didn't reflect thrust the way most dry land did. Each liftoff and landing was in a curtain of dust, but that was no worse a problem than the steam that blasted up from normal water operations.

Though it didn't impede operations, the dust coated everything instead of draining off the way condensate would. That was simply unpleasant, though, and there was very little about star travel whichwasn't unpleasant in Adele's estimation. It didn't matter, because she wasn't going to be on Four long.

Only a handful of the Bagarians would bother to use Daniel's complex programs. For the most part they'd let the computer take them toward Pelosi by the simplest route, pleased not to have officers aboard to roust them onto the hull to make manual adjustments. But Daniel would've tried to keep them clear of Alliance pursuers, would've done his duty and gone well beyond it. That shared attitude was why Adele found him such a congenial friend.

"Ladouceur, this is Sissie Five," said Vesey's clipped voice. "We're on station. There's no sign of unusual activity in the vicinity of Pleasaunce, over."

Adele ran the message as text at the bottom of Daniel's display. While it didn't interfere with his computations, he'd notice it there.

How very typical of Vesey that she'd give two critical pieces of information and not ask any questions. Most people, even most RCN officers, acted as though their excitement and nervousness were more important than whatever the party they were jabbering at was doing.

Another prize lifted. The initial vibration was as violent as that on water, but the sound through Four's thin atmosphere was only a shrill whisper. The plasma flare was so bright, however, that the display dimmed it with a 10% mask.

"Acknowledged, Sissie Five," Adele said. "The operation appears to be proceeding well. Over."

TheAntipodes lifted while the immediately previous prize was still in mid-sky. Clearly Blantyre and Rene had made the right decision. The cargo-Adele's wands flicked-was Carnera brocades; they'd be quite valuable if they reached Pelosi.

Daniel transmitted the latest course data-to theMP5052, Adele noticed-and switched to the still-open channel with thePrincess Cecile . He winked at Adele.