“I think we can count ourselves lucky,” Daniel said with a reminiscent smile. “I don’t believe many corvettes have survived a pair of eight-inch bolts from such short range.”
“We’re safe enough,” Woetjans said, “but it’ll take us a month to limp back to Sexburga with the rig we’ve got left. Unless—”
Her voice changed, growing noticeably brighter.
“—you’re planning to punch us straight back to Strymon, sir?”
“No, I’m not planning to do that,” Daniel said without losing his smile. “But I assure you, Woetjans, the next time I need volunteers for a suicide mission I’ll keep you in mind.”
He looked at his officers, his face quite different from that of the man with whom Adele shared a two-room suite and who chatted about natural history and girls. His hand touched a key. In the air between him and the standing officers—Mon and Woetjans stepped back—appeared a holographic image of six starships against the icy surface of Tanais.
“The battleship is Der Grosser Karl,” Daniel said. “She must be on her shakedown cruise.”
“The bloody Winckelmann hasn’t been in first-line service for twenty years,” Mon muttered, “and the Winckelmann’s no bloody battleship.”
“Yes, that’s so,” Daniel said. His tone was neutral, but Mon heard the reproach in it and colored. His lips formed a silent apology.
“The heavy cruiser is of the Marshal class,” Daniel continued, “but she isn’t any of the previously described members of that class. Presumably she’s also a newly built vessel on her first commission, so we can hope that she’s crewed largely by green personnel and hasn’t been properly worked up as yet.”
Everybody nodded. Adele didn’t need Mon’s editorializing to realize that the same could be said about the crews of Commodore Pettin’s three vessels.
“The destroyers are R class, and they appear to have made a hard voyage to reach Strymon,” Daniel said. “Two are missing masts, and a third has hull damage that may have been caused by thruster failures during landing. My guess is that the Alliance commander plans to refit his squadron on Tanais before proceeding to Strymon proper. The anti-Cinnabar faction in the government can seal off a naval base, but as soon as an Alliance squadron appears above Strymon, there’s a certainty of word getting out.”
“If Pettin catches the Alliance ships on the ground, he can handle them with even what he’s got,” Woetjans said. “It’s suicide to lift when the other guy’s shooting down a gravity well into your throat. Even a bloody battleship.”
“There’s the Tanais forts,” Mon said. “Go back on the hull and look around if you’ve forgotten about them.”
“More to the point,” Daniel said, “there’re normally four Strymonian frigates in orbit over Strymon. Because of the orbital positions of Strymon and Tanais I can’t be sure, but we have to assume that the conspirators are being at least normally careful at this time.”
“One moment,” Adele said. Her wands called up the data she’d swept from the electromagnetic spectrum during the corvette’s minutes in the Strymon system, then sorted it according to times and naval slugs. Among the officers behind her swirled a discussion of the danger even to a cruiser if she tried to lift with hostile frigates in orbit above her.
Tanais was 712 million miles from Strymon—somewhat closer to their common sun—when the Princess Cecile had approached the base. Rather than using the relay satellites, routine information was passed by courier vessels which shuttled back and forth through the Matrix, using microwave to cross the final 100,000 to 250,000 mile leg instead of landing at either end. Adele’s data included the latest pair of transmissions.
It struck Adele that the crews of the courier vessels probably found the duty very boring; though her realization was based on what the spacers she served with would feel rather than any personal distaste for such duty. So long as Adele had a sufficient database to occupy her, she really didn’t care whether she was on the ground or in a ship moving in a repetitive circuit.
Adele pulsed an amber caret across the top of Daniel’s cabin-center display. She didn’t want to break into the discussion, but she did have information the spacers might need.