“All right,” Adele said, turning to Greiner; she held her control wands ready. “Tell me what signal you want for the trigger. I suggest something simple, but it’s entirely up to you.”
Greiner frowned like thunder. “All right,” he said abruptly. “RCN. Use that—the three letters, RCN.”
Adele’s wands flickered. She looked up again.
“All right,” she said again. “I’ve entered that. Simply transmit the program at . . . fifteen point oh-five-oh kilohertz with enough power that the Princess Cecile can pick up the signal. As close as we are, that’s less power than it takes to light a match.”
Greiner hesitated. “Go ahead,” Adele said impatiently. “For the test it’ll only shut them down for two seconds. When you’ve seen the demonstration, I’ll set it to make the shutdown permanent the next time . . . which is for you to choose, but three or four in the morning seems to me to be suitable.”
“First show me,” Greiner said. “Now.”
Adele set down her wands and crossed her hands in her lap. “No,” she said. “Send the signal yourself, Lieutenant. RCN, you said. Send it.”
Greiner dropped heavily into the seat of the console he’d used before; with the virtual keyboard he brought up a communications display as a sidebar. The realtime visuals of the Princess Cecile remained the main image. He checked his setup, then locked eyes with Adele momentarily before stabbing the Execute button.
The Princess Cecile’s lights went out. Her hull gleamed faintly in the starlight. Battery-powered lights appeared, beads of illumination which emphasized the greater darkness. If there’d been an audio pickup, Adele and Greiner would’ve heard angry shouting.
The corvette’s lights came on again, generally with a rush; a few quivered for a time as overage exciters struggled to build the charge. Adele, smiling with satisfaction, made a further adjustment with her wands. She put her handheld unit back in its pocket and rose.
“They’ll be wondering where we are,” she said. “And I’m sure Captain Leary is getting a panicked call from the duty officer, saying that a fault shut off the ship’s power momentarily. He’ll leave and probably recommend the rest of us leave with him. If I don’t accompany them, there may be awkward questions.”
“Yes, we’ll go back to the banquet compartment,” Greiner said, unlocking the hatch. “There’ve been enough odd things happening already tonight!”
* * *
“Ah, Adele?” Daniel asked. “I know you have, ah, ways of listening. Have you learned anything about what’s happening in the Goldenfels?”
He spoke in a low voice, pitching his words to carry across the hum of the bridge consoles operating on standby. The Princess Cecile waited under a complete lockout of radio communication, ordered by Daniel and enforced by Adele through the Signals Console.
Adele turned to look at him, past Sun and Betts at the gunnery and missile boards respectively. The holographic displays, though blank, shed a pearly luminescence over the compartment. There was plenty of light to see by.
“I haven’t tried,” she said. “I won’t try. Too many things could go wrong.”
“Yes, of course,” Daniel said. “Forgive me. Part of me keeps thinking of the Goldenfels as a freighter, and of course it’s not.”
The Alliance vessel could be, must be, presumed to have electronic defenses and countermeasures equal to the material armament which Daniel could deduce from structural hints. The only visible plasma weapons were the twin 10-cm guns in the forward turret, comparable to the Sissie’s own guns. No freighter would voyage the North with less.
Two double-opening hatch covers on the Goldenfels’ port side, toward the corvette, and similar ones to starboard, were of the correct size to cover twin 15-cm guns, however; or, less probably, individual 20-cm plasma cannon, weapons whose single bolt would at this range vaporize half the Princess Cecile.
Daniel assumed that the Alliance vessel had a missile armament as well, though that wasn’t a matter of immediate concern. If things went as wrong as they might soon do, the Goldenfels wouldn’t need missiles to destroy the Sissie utterly.
Daniel chuckled. Sun looked over at him. “Sir?” he said.
A sub-machine gun hung from the back of the gunner’s seat, though his primary task was to operate the plasma cannon if necessary. If things went as everyone hoped and expected, there wouldn’t be shooting of any kind tonight.