Having riggers topside on this hop would condemn most of them to death, although that was a relatively minor concern. After all, an error in the location and vector of the corvette’s return to sidereal space this time was probably a death sentence for the whole crew.
Daniel looked at Mon’s plan, then raised the charge on both sails of the starboard row by a few milliamps. That would give the Princess Cecile a slight axial torque as she exited the Matrix, spreading her missiles as they left their tubes. The dispassionate part of Daniel’s mind realized that this adjustment was why his launch solution had differed slightly from the missileer’s. For these few moments, the Princess Cecile was a creature of soul and body, not an object crewed by men.
Daniel engaged the exit sequence on the astrogation computer. “Ship, prepare to exit the Matrix in thirty seconds,” he announced. “Reentry will follow immediately. S-s-s captain out.”
His tongue had wanted to identify him as the Ship. The small part of Daniel’s brain that remained objective wouldn’t permit his muscles and subconscious to confuse his crew that way. He smiled, amused at himself and trembling with anticipation.
The Princess Cecile began to shiver. Casimir energy squeezed the starship in three mutually exclusive directions, forcing it out of the interstices between bubble universes and back into the universe of men.
Still smiling, Daniel switched from the navigational and attack screens to a simple real-time display. The other data were attempts to predict and modify the future. If he hadn’t done his job correctly, there was no future for the Princess Cecile.
Entry into the sidereal universe: gut-wrenching, mind-wrenching. Adele looked across the bridge at him. Her face was that of a crucified saint.
The Hammer filled Daniel’s display.
The Umbrans had the reputation of building handsome vessels, but the guardship in its present form looked like a pair of hulks progressing through the breakers yard. The Hammer had been dismasted or nearly so: the lower sections of three forward antennas remained to support the communications gear, and those of the final ring sternward—when a heavy cruiser, the Hammer was an eight-row vessel—were stubbed out to attach a bladder holding additional reaction mass.
As an Umbran heavy cruiser the Hammer had weighed 12,000 tons, but the cylindrical bladder the Falassans had added was nearly half the volume of the original hull. The parts were connected by eight tensioning cables around the rim as well as by fifty feet of rigid tubing, giving the whole the form of an unbalanced dumbbell.
The Hammer was elevating the plasma cannon in her quadruple turrets; the shutters were sliding back from her rocket and missile tubes. Daniel had hoped the Princess Cecile’s initial in-and-out appearance would have passed unnoticed, but the Falassan crew was definitely alert.
The corvette’s hull rang as jets of superheated steam ejected one and then the other loaded missile from her tubes. The missiles were thirty-foot spaceships containing an antimatter converter, reaction mass and twin High Drive units; exhaust would devour the launchers if they were lighted within the vessel itself.
There was no warhead, though at burnout the missile would separate into four segments to increase the coverage area. When a missile exhausted its reaction mass, it was travelling at a significant fraction of light speed; a warhead, even a thermonuclear device, would add nothing to the effectiveness of a kinetic energy weapon.
The guardship was less than ten miles away from where the Princess Cecile reentered sidereal space. Uncle Stacey would be proud of me.
“Prepare to reenter!” Daniel said, shouting in an unconscious attempt to speed a process that would take its own time regardless. A matter of seconds, no more, but lives end in a fraction of that. . . .
The corvette had risen into sidereal space, launched her missiles, and now was dropping back into the Matrix like a fish straining to hide again below the surface. The Hammer’s turrets couldn’t slew on target in the moments available, but her rockets course-corrected by angling their thrusters in accordance with data supplied by the targeting computer. Gas puffed from ports all along the guardship’s flank as she fired a desperate salvo.