Lt. Leary, Commanding by David Drake

Daniel switched the left half of his display to a real-time image of Tanais. The corvette’s course had already brought her within the forts’ interlocking orbits. The whine of the High Drive gained in volume as it maintained balance between the conflicting pulls of Getica and of the smaller but closer satellite. Tanais Base was a scrawl within the ice sheet, visible from diffracted light. Thermal imaging would make the tunnels even more evident.

“RCS Princess Cecile, this is Tanais Control,” said a new voice: male, forceful, and very determined. “Return to the challenge point immediately and stay there until you have authorization to close. You are in a restricted area at a time of national emergency. Return to the challenge point or we will fire! Tanais over!”

Good God, there was a heavy battle squadron down there! Not in the base proper but on the ice on the side of Tanais which eternally faced Getica.

“Tanais Base, we’re withdrawing immediately!” Daniel said as his fingers typed preset emergency codes. The first of them returned control to the command console from the Battle Direction Center. Lt. Mon might be able to handle this as ably as Daniel could, but it was God’s truth that they couldn’t both be responsible at the same time.

If Daniel had had time, he’d have prayed that he didn’t miskey . . . but if he’d had time, he’d have been able to check his work. “I repeat, RCS Princess Cecile is withdrawing immedia—”

“Daniel,” said Adele’s voice over the intercom. She didn’t sound nervous but her tone was as joyless as a slaughterhouse. “Base Command has just ordered the forts to open fire on us.”

With the command console locked down the way it was, no one should have been able to break in. No one but Adele could have.

“Shit!” Daniel shouted. That probably startled Tanais Control, but a lot of people were getting surprises today. Daniel’s left hand chopped the High Drive while his right engaged the sequence that would return the Princess Cecile to the Matrix.

“Ship!” Daniel said. “Spacers, we’re under attack by Tanais Base. I’m inserting us into—”

The forts each mounted eight-inch plasma cannon in turrets on the north and south axes. The Princess Cecile’s course had carried her planetward between two of the forts. Their guns fired as pairs within microseconds of one another. The bolts—dense, thigh-thick gouts of charged particles—tore through vacuum a hundred yards behind the corvette. They made their own light, like sections ripped from a star’s corona.

“—the Matrix where—”

Daniel could feel the Princess Cecile start to shift out of sidereal space. The hair on his neck tingled and a trembling in his gut mimicked the onset of panic.

“—we’ll be able—”

The forts missed because Daniel had shut off braking thrust as he prepared to reenter the Matrix. The gunnery computers calculated lead based on the rate of change in the corvette’s progress—and therefore fired short. The delay between discharges for heavy cannon was fifteen to twenty seconds; otherwise heat buildup in the chamber would cause a catastrophic failure when lasers compressed and detonated the second tritium pellet. The Princess Cecile was safe from the guns that had already engaged her.

The third fort came around the curve of the satellite on a combination of the corvette’s momentum and the fort’s own orbital velocity. The Princess Cecile’s vector above the surface of Tanais carried her directly toward the fort, giving the guns a zero-deflection shot.

Sun couldn’t fire his own pairs of four-inch cannon because of the Princess Cecile’s sails. When set they draped the hull like shrouds and would absorb the vessel’s own discharges in fiery cataclysms.

“For what we are about to receive . . .” the gunner said, shouting because words were the only response he could make to a situation he appreciated even more clearly than his captain. “The Lord make us thankful!”

Two eight-inch plasma bolts ripped through the portion of the Princess Cecile which hadn’t yet trembled out of sidereal space. Their scouring impact flared across Daniel’s display.

Chapter Twenty-three

“Well, things could be a great deal worse,” said Daniel in a pleased tone, leaning back in his console.

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