David Drake: When the Tide Rises

Daniel would only've been muscle under Woetjans' direction, but despite spending too bloody much time on his butt he still had a good set of muscles. It'd be nice to walk through the woods of Bantry again with Hogg, carrying shotguns but mostly just reconnecting with the living creatures of his childhood.

A lot of people had died today. He was sorry for every one of them and especially sorry about Vesey; but he was RCN and the battle wasn't over yet.

The corvette's return to sidereal space was as shockingly sudden as being dropped in ice water. The PPI came live. TheSissie 'd crawled to get here, but she'dextracted where he'd wanted her: thirty light-seconds from the kill zone between the Alliance wings. They were well above the plane of the Jewel System's ecliptic.

Images of the corvette's outer hull formed a montage on the bottom half of the command display. They showed sixteen angles at a time, shifting as different shutters opened. Daniel ignored that for the moment while he checked how the battle'd developed while he was directing thePrincess Cecile to safety.

The battle had developed very well-for Cinnabar.

Both RCN battleships had launched a maximum-effort salvo at thePleasaunce. That meant forty-seven missiles from theZeno, a very good percentage of the forty-eight tubes she mounted, and a perfect thirty-six missiles from theLao-tze.

A battleship's hull torqued more than that of a corvette. Stresses concentrated at weak points on the exterior, frequently jamming shutters or even crumpling a missile tube within the fabric of the hull. For an old ship like theLao-tze to manage a full launch implied both remarkable preparation and luck.

The paired salvos were overwhelming. ThePleasaunce was at zero deflection to the oncoming missiles, so she hadn't a prayer of maneuvering out of the swept zone. Because her hull was skewed to her line of travel, she was able to swing eight 20-cm turrets onto defense. Half a dozen projectiles showed on the PPI as expanding balls of gas, but not even a battleship could fend off an attack of that magnitude.

A missile struck portside on thePleasaunce 's axis, just behind the bridge. Because of the quartering angle it travelled through much of the hull before exiting to starboard as a fireball a hundred feet forward of the stern. That by itself turned the battleship to blazing junk, but three more projectiles hit the wreck within a matter of seconds.

One of the missiles had been vaporized without being nudged from its programmed course. As a final insult, it swept as a cloud of glowing steel into the remains of the stricken dreadnought which was by now a larger cloud. Daniel expanded the scene momentarily; it looked like an astronomical image of galaxies colliding.

Daniel wiped the display again, his lips pursing on the sour image. May their souls find peace. He didn't in the least regret the destruction of one of the Alliance's newest and most powerful battleships, but he'd have preferred it to happen when the ship was in harbor with only an anchor watch aboard.

Mind, if he'd been captain of theZeno, he'd have felt a thrill when he pushed Execute; there was no way he'd have left that duty for his Missile Officer. This was a war, and the best way to end it quickly was to drive the Alliance Fleet from the cosmos. Destroying a Planetary Class battleship was a good start, and forcing a heavy cruiser into similar ruin was abloody nice piece of work for a corvette!

The Barnyard element was launching a second salvo, but for now Daniel gave his attention to thePrincess Cecile 's damage. There should've been sixteen images at a time cycling on his display, but at the moment seven were either black, indicating the lenses were covered, or iridescent because there was no signal to feed them. One of the black squares suddenly cleared as a pair of riggers lifted a ten-foot length of spar and the blobs of sail melted to it. They shoved the tangle out into space.

ThePrincess Cecile was Kostroman built. She'd been a reasonably well-found vessel when Lieutenant Leary captured her, but when the prize money started flowing in he'd brought her equipment up to RCN standard.

Among other things, he'd replaced the original hull cameras with triple units so that he could twice rotate new lenses into place in event of damage to the one which'd been in use. He did that now to those connected to pearly images, though one of the four simply went black when the head was replaced.

The Navy Board expected its warships to be damaged in service. Not all of them were, but no ship under Daniel Leary's command had been that sort of exception.

That was certainly the case with theSissie on her present deployment. The injury to the rigging was much worse than Daniel had expected: he'd known the three 15-cm bolts from cruisers had stripped all but the A ring antenna from the port side, but some of the yards had become secondary projectiles. Because of the angle they'd sheared four ventral antennas off just above the mainsail yards.

No wonder theSissie 'd handled like a pig in the Matrix! They could jury rig her using spars, but Daniel'd have to pick his courses very carefully if he were going to bring her home before they all had long white beards. That was all right if they were going home, but heaven help them if the corvette had to go into action again without a lengthy spell in a shipyard first.

They'd be short of sail fabric as well as replacement spars. Well, perhaps the magazines in Port Delacroix could help-though thePrincess Cecile was scarcely the only member of the Diamondia Squadron needing repair.

If necessary, Admiral James could commandeer the rigging from the freighters in the Outer Harbor and pay the owners in treasury warrants. The civilians wouldn't be happy about it, but spacers who'd just saved them from the Alliance wouldn't be in a mood to listen to moaning. Certainly Daniel wouldn't.

The images flipped one after the other like tumbling dominos as the pickups rotated around the four angles each covered. Another wall of debris lifted and sailed off in its own separate orbit. Past the legs of the spacers who'd thrown the tangle-the team was Blantyre and Cory, each with a short come-along-Daniel saw the port outrigger. A plasma bolt had seared away the end, including one of the High Drive motors.

Are the remaining internal partitions tight? We'd better learn before we make a water landing.

There must be fifty people out on the hull. Both rigging watches were there as a matter of course, but in addition to the midshipmen every Power Room tech with a hard suit was helping to cut away the wreckage. TheSissie 'd escaped without hull damage, but every spacer knew that a dreadnought battle was no place for a corvette which had to move at a waddle.

Though-when Daniel glanced again at the PPI, it seemed to him that the battle was over. The cruiserVineta was maneuvering to pick up survivors of thePleasaunce. There wouldn't be many even if the crew'd donned suits before the action, but perhaps a hundred of the thousand or more might survive if they could be gathered aboard another ship while their air supply lasted.

The Alliance left wing, theFormentera with the light cruisersDurston andWaechter, were headed toward open space, shaking out their rigs in preparation for inserting into the Matrix. They didn't launch missiles because the remains of the right wing screened the RCN battleships.

It crossed Daniel's mind that theFormentera and her escorts might reappear and turn the battle around by attacking from an unsuspected angle… but that was howhe thought. It was unlikely that an Alliance captain who'd just watched his sister ship being blown to vapor along with the admiral commanding would be planning attacks on an enemy of twice his force.

TheZeno andLao-Tze had launched a second salvo, this time targeting the heavy cruisersHertha andViceroy Adelbert. Daniel was relieved to see that the older battleship got off only twenty-nine missiles this time. He had as high an opinion of the RCN's professionalism as any man alive, but if theLao-tze 's launch had been perfect again, he'd have to believe that Captain Stickel was in league with the Devil.