Lt. Leary, Commanding by David Drake

“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.

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