He switched to the intercom channel and continued, “Ship, this is Six. We’ll begin braking to land in seven minutes. This’ll be another dry landing and there’s at least a chance that there’ll be some Alliance spacers popping small arms at us while we’re coming in, so be ready for whatever happens. Six out.”
Daniel turned his attention to his console. Adele echoed it momentarily on her own in case she’d be called on to act shortly. She saw nothing for personal concern.
The command display kept the PPI on the upper left quadrant while the remainder was given over to engineering data—plasma thrusters, High Drive motors, machinery status, and the amount of reaction mass in each of the eight separate tanks. They’d topped off on Todos Santos—and had taken the time to lay in bulk provisions as well, since they’d been limited to on-board stores ever since the Princess Cecile left Tegeli.
“It could get pretty exciting clearing ’em out of a warren the size of the Goldenfels,” Hogg commented, standing to the right of the bridge hatch while Tovera stood on the left. Strictly speaking they should’ve been strapped into their bunks during landing because they didn’t have ship-handling duties—but it didn’t really matter, and neither of the pair were people to whom folk spoke strictly.
“We haven’t had any excitement for a long time,” Tovera said. She gave Hogg a slow smile. “Too long, perhaps.”
“There’s that,” he agreed, adjusting the bandolier which held reloads for his heavy impeller. “There is that.”
Adele listened to the by-play as she made a final check of her own responsibilities. She didn’t understand either Hogg or Tovera; but then, she didn’t understand most people, herself included. At least you could predict with assurance what Hogg and Tovera would do in a given situation. If more people were like them, life would be simpler—albeit much more dangerous.
Daniel had planned the details of the operation with his officers on the brutal five-day voyage to Morzanga, all of it spent in the Matrix without the usual drops into sidereal space to check their position and to provide the crew with a brief taste of normality. Time was very short, especially if they ran into trouble here—and they were almost certain to run into trouble.
Adele’s job was to update the imagery of the Goldenfels and the cannon-ripped country craft overturned in the jungle. The Princess Cecile had only made one pass in low orbit, but thanks to Mistress Sand the corvette’s imaging equipment was of even higher quality than normal for an RCN warship.
She transferred the new visuals into a suspense file available to all the command group. Daniel and Pasternak were wholly involved in the landing, but she noticed that the officers in the Battle Direction Center opened the imagery at once. They were backup for the landing, but when Mr. Leary had the conn nobody else worried much.
“Ship, prepare for braking!” Daniel ordered. The thrusters roared to life, dropping the Sissie into the deeper atmosphere.
Adele pored over the visuals as they rocked and shuddered toward the ground. There were no differences she could see between these shots and the file images taken when the Princess Cecile lifted from Morzanga a matter of weeks, bare weeks, before. It certainly seemed longer than that. . . .
The jungle still covered the ancient wreck. That didn’t prove that the Goldenfels’ crew hadn’t been working on her, but there was no sign they had. Of course if the Alliance spacers had already carried the High Drive motors to their own vessel, it’d save the Sissies some time.
That was unlikely, though. They probably didn’t even know the older wreck existed.
“Prepare for landing!” Daniel ordered. “Prepare for landing!”
The thunder redoubled. The corvette bobbled like a ball in a waterspout, then touched: the stern outriggers feather-light, the bow an instant later and minusculely harder. Hatches started to open immediately.
“Laying down covering fire!” Sun announced. The cannon in the dorsal turret fired a burst of four high-intensity plasma discharges just short of the Goldenfels, which was on its side only a hundred meters from where the Sissie’d landed. The guns’ directed thermonuclear explosions made the corvette ring like a struck anvil and dug fiery scoopfuls out of the earth. Fans of glass and blazing humus sprayed against the Goldenfels’ hull.