Lt. Leary, Commanding (52 page)

Besides, when the ions of the exhaust changed state and recombined, they created omniband interference. Even the commo suite's sophisticated software couldn't sharpen more than a fraction of the transmissions into intelligible form.

Adele continued listening to intership signals, of course; it was just harder.

The last of the riggers were stripping their suits off with cheerful animation. Twenty feet farther down the corridor, their quicker fellows were catching the impellers and submachine guns which Gansevoort tossed them from the arms room.

Woetjans, with an impeller in her hand
and
a submachine gun slung across her chest, pushed her way onto the bridge and stood behind Adele's console. "Mistress?" the bosun said. "Can you transmit the show of the cruiser getting it in the neck to the starboard watch's helmets? We were in the airlock and couldn't see squat."

Adele looked up, ready to snarl that she was busy. She looked at Woetjans, who'd spent the critical moments of the attack in a steel box tighter than a coffin—and a coffin indeed if anything had gone wrong. Woetjans, whose present concern was that her riggers get a taste of the
Princess Cecile
's victory before they went out with small arms to further risk their lives.

"Yes, of course," Adele said. She blanked her display, then searched the current imagery files for the set in question. "Signals to Vesey!" she said as her wands flashed. "Take over communications duties immediately. Signals ov—no, signals
out
."

Either midshipman could handle the commo chores; in fact the suite's routing software could probably manage unaided, little though Adele cared to admit the fact. She'd picked Vesey rather than Dorst for the duty because a marksman of Dorst's ability had other uses during a battle on the ground.

Hogg, wearing RCN utilities and a knapsack of munitions, stood close to the command console where Daniel continued to make course corrections and talk with his division chiefs. Hogg carried his own weapon, a stocked impeller. He held his master's equipment belt, which included a holstered pistol, but nobody took Daniel's job to be that of gunman.

Which reminds me. . . .
"Tovera," Adele said, keying the intercom, "bring me my belt equipment now. Including the new pistol, if you please."

She'd forgotten to sign off, but with Tovera that wouldn't—

Woetjans crooked her finger in a tiny gesture. Adele jerked her head around.
Wouldn't matter,
she'd been thinking, but in fact Tovera already stood behind the console, smiling faintly. Adele's equipment belt was in her left hand.

Tovera wore a smoke gray jumpsuit with crossed bandoliers of ammunition and grenades. She didn't have the attaché case because today she carried her submachine gun openly. The weapon was subtly different from those being issued from the arms room: it was of Alliance manufacture, a relic—like the sociopath's training—of the time she served a Fifth Bureau spymaster.

Adele transmitted the guardship's final moments, then called up the series showing the Dalbriggan assault on Homeland as recorded during the
Princess Cecile
's run back to Falassa in sidereal space. The riggers were topside at the time, taking down the antennas, but they wouldn't have been doing any sightseeing. Apart from informing her shipmates, the bosun might be able to explain details that puzzled Adele.

The second sequence began to run on the display. The imagery had been gathered under high magnification and blown up further by the computer. Adele pointed with her index and middle fingers together at cutters looking like six bright sparks as they appeared from the Matrix in the upper reaches of Falassa's atmosphere.

"Here," she said. "They came too close and tore themselves apart—but Daniel says the Dalbriggans are very able. What . . . ?"

Woetjans bent to get the best viewing angle. "Bugger me!" she said. "The bastards
are
good!"

Adele winced at the thought of somebody trying to sodomize the bosun. Just a figure of speech, but an unfortunate mental image nonetheless.

The six Dalbriggan cutters had entered sidereal space with considerable motion relative to Falassa. The rigging that propelled them through the Matrix ripped away in long trails of fire: even the attenuated atmosphere forty miles above the surface was too dense for antennas and sails to withstand at transorbital velocities.

"They're hitting the port defenses, mistress," Woetjans said. "If they came in normal they'd be sitting ducks, but—"

When Adele first saw the puffs of half-burned gases envelop the Dalbriggan cutters, she'd thought all six of them had exploded. Now she realized that they'd instead launched their full magazines of chemical rockets. She was seeing the exhausts, not the debris of an explosion.

"They're trading their rigs for real surprise, you see?" Woetjans said. Adele
did
see, now that it was explained to her. "They can step new antennas after the fight, but if they don't knock out the missile pits on the ground—"

"The missiles, not the enemy ships?" Adele asked, her eyes narrowing.

Woetjans sneered. "Not with this lot, mistress," she said. "They
ain't
enemies, they're all on the same side—once they sort out who's the top dog, you see? It's not like it is with us."

Adele said nothing aloud.
Actually, it's quite a lot like the Three Circles Conspiracy and its aftermath. But of course Woetjans meant
"
not like the RCN.
"

The cutters which had attacked in the stratosphere skipped up from the denser layers of atmosphere instead of trying to land. One disintegrated in a fireball which continued on its previous course like a brief comet.

"Ground defenses," Woetjans explained; she wriggled her finger momentarily in the hologram, disrupting the five silvery streaks which slashed up and past the vanished cutter. "One of the missile crews was quick enough and lucky enough to get home."

She chuckled. "Not lucky enough to be home in bed when about a dozen rockets landed on their pit, though, I'll wager," she added.

The remainder of the Dalbriggan fleet appeared in orbit with the suddenness of raindrops spattering a dry surface. Unlike the initial attackers, these cutters had used the Matrix to greatly reduce their relative motion. Plasma thrusters flared, braking them down to Falassa's surface.

"See the antennas come down already?" Woetjans demanded in a mixture of envy and delight. "They had their riggers topside when they transitioned. There'll be a empty few berths tonight or I'm a virgin."

The bosun shook her head and added, "But God love me, mistress, what spacers these bastards are!"

The guardship, wrecked beyond repair but still mostly complete, passed through the image area. Several of the gun turrets were intact. The plasma cannon had been elevating at the moment of the
Princess Cecile
's attack; Adele noted with surprise that now the weapons were lowered and realigned with the guardship's axis. That meant that portions of the
Hammer
's crew and armaments were in full working order.

Adele highlighted the guardship in red, using a flick of her wands instead of poking her finger through the image. "Isn't it dangerous to leave the Falassans that way?" she asked. "Couldn't they shoot?"

The bosun's eyes narrowed. "Damn if I'd want an Alliance cruiser where the
Hammer
is," she said, "but I'd guess it's a matter of local rules. They could make themself unpleasant, but they couldn't change anything much—not with their central fire control screwed for sure. They're being quiet so somebody'll take them off the wreck before they run outa air. Which won't be long, not the way they been hit."

"On the ground in three minutes!" the PA system blared in Daniel's voice. "Boarding party to the entryway!"

Woetjans straightened. "That's us, mistress," she said. She patted the length of tubing under her belt.

"Yes," said Adele, rising and taking her own equipment rather than permitting Tovera to buckle it about her. The bosun's cudgel seemed superfluous, given that the stocked impeller would make a satisfactory club if one were required; but more than logic determines the choices one makes when setting out to kill or be killed.

Adele checked the little pistol in her side pocket, making sure that it was still easily accessible. It was.

"Ready, Adele?" Daniel asked, adjusting his helmet slightly. He wore his visor down as a matter of course, a practical technique that made Adele feel caged.

"Yes, of course," Adele said. Sandwiched between Woetjans and Daniel, she trotted toward the companionway. Tovera and Hogg had gone ahead. The corridor was clear: all crewmen who weren't necessary to the immediate needs of the vessel stood on B Level, armed and ready for ground combat.

"We're landing at the north side of the Homeland community," Daniel explained cheerfully. "The Dalbriggans came down at the spaceport to the south and secured the ships there. They'll be pushing what resistance there is toward us, I suspect."

"Make way for the captain!" Woetjans bellowed. The entryway was crowded. If there'd been an attempt to leave an aisle, spacers equipped for ground deployment had filled it like sand in a mold.

In the delay before shoving wider the crack the crewmen tried to form, Woetjans said over her shoulder, "You don't think the fighting'll be over by the time we're on the ground, sir?"

If Daniel answered, his words were lost in the blast of the thrusters doubled by reflection from the surface. The corvette bucked violently. Adele would have fallen and then been bounced like a ball except for Daniel's firm hand on her shoulder.

She smiled, an expression she knew by now would have frightened anyone who saw it. In this crush, nobody would.

Even as a child, Adele Mundy had known the fighting would never be over. If there wasn't a battle raging at this place
now
, there were battles going on elsewhere and would always be battles until there was no longer a species called Man in the universe.

As a child, though, Adele hadn't imagined that she would be one of those who fought.

_A
s soon as the main hatch tilted forward enough to break the
seal along the upper edge, smoke and ashes swirled into the
Princess Cecile
. The automatic impeller fixed to the wardroom hatch on the level above cut loose with a long burst, making the hull ring as it recoiled. An incoming projectile whanged off the corvette's bow.

"Boarders, spread out and form along the road on this side!" Daniel shouted. "Over!"

The hatch thumped down in soft soil, rolling up sparks from the weeds and brush ignited by the
Princess Cecile
's exhaust. A ridge of slightly higher ground supported a grove of trees, but the river a hundred yards north of the corvette flooded often enough to rot the roots of large vegetation on the flats. The road just beyond was built on a levee and made a good blocking position.

Daniel started for the grove, well behind the riggers in his fifty-strong party. They'd jumped while the end of the ramp was still ten feet in the air. The thrusters had baked the ground solid. The mud was more organic than mineral, so the stench was worse than that of a fire in a charnel house.

There was a bright white flash in the direction of the distant spaceport. Almost immediately the ground shuddered, but the crash of rending metal was many seconds delayed. The bow of a pirate cutter tilted up, then toppled again below the line of the causeway. There was no way to tell which side had been responsible for the destruction.

"
Boarders, gunmen are taking position on the other side of the—
" Tovera said. Her cold voice was little changed by the compression of the helmet radio link.

A stocked impeller began to fire behind Daniel, the slugs passing close overhead. He stumbled on a root that remained tough despite the charring. Righting himself he glanced backward. Hogg was seated cross-legged on the top of the ramp. His arms were braced on his knees and the impeller's sling, locking the weapon on target.

Every time Hogg fired, a head slipped out of sight behind the causeway. Sometimes there was a splash in the air behind where the head had been.

Midway between the road and the corvette, the ground was still soggy. Daniel's right boot sank ankle deep, throwing him forward. Spurts of mud and pulped foliage leaped high, drawing a diagonal across the line of advancing spacers. The man to Daniel's right crumpled, holding his belly and screaming. His equipment belt twisted away from him as he fell, severed by the slug.

The
Princess Cecile
's upper turret roared, raking the causeway with pulses of plasma. The bolts were hammerblows of pure heat on the back of Daniel's neck and bare hands. Several of the spacers fell—unharmed, or he hoped so, but thrown to the ground by the crashing discharges.

Daniel's visor blacked out the flashes that would otherwise have destroyed his retinas. What he saw as he continued to stagger forward was an invisible giant chewing hunks out of the roadway. Wet silt exploded in steam and the dark red flames of carbon; rock ballast blew to glassy shards or white, searing calcium flames.

The Falassan gunfire ceased. "Boarders, form along the roadway!" Daniel wheezed. "Over!"

Sun ceased fire after his twin cannon had devoured three hundred yards of roadway. Through the smoke of the new fires, Daniel saw people running back toward the town to the south or standing with their hands in the air.

Several of the spacers were shooting wildly as they advanced. They weren't going to hit anything—well, they weren't going to hit any Falassans, though their fellows were at risk—and the locals seemed to have stopped fighting anyway.

"Boarders, cease fire!" Daniel ordered. He thought again about his notion of small-arms training for the crew. There'd have been time for it during refit on Tanais. The Sissies would've been excited to have something real to be doing on a barren iceball. Instead—

Another explosion shook Homeland. An orange fireball lifted a metal roof and a human body. The figure was pinwheeling; the arms and legs had separated from the torso before it all dropped out of sight.