She sat at her own console and brought up a display with over forty segments.
“—to me, for forwarding to you as required. You’ll have a realtime display of what’s going on aboard the Goldenfels as you right her.”
Daniel stared at her. “Oh,” he said. “Ah. Actually, that might be useful. I didn’t realize it would be possible.”
The best they could expect from this violent maneuver was straining of the Goldenfels’ hull. If in fact the freighter started to come apart as it lifted—and the Sissies hadn’t been able to check all her structural members without removing hull plates, a task for which they lacked both time and equipment—then the Princess Cecile would be involved in the wreck unless Daniel set her back down immediately. Internal imagery might give him warning that he wouldn’t otherwise get.
“That’s why you have me, captain,” Adele said calmly. She clamped down her acceleration harness, then gave Daniel one of her wry smiles.
Daniel checked the time, then noticed something missing. He didn’t like Tovera, but . . .
Aloud, frowning, he said, “Adele, where’s Tovera?”
“She said she’d stay on the ground,” Adele said without expression.
“She figures if the Goldenfels’ crew’s going to try anything, it’ll be now,” Hogg said, amplifying the simple statement. “She’s got a point, and we figured one of us aboard was enough to take care of the ship’s rats if they make a break from the hold.”
“Yes, I suppose that’s true,” Daniel said. Hogg sounded vaguely regretful. Well, we all learn we have to make choices in life.
With a smile spreading across his face, Daniel checked his display. The eight thrusters showed green, ready to go, and the only opening was the main hatch.
“Ship, this is Six,” he said, his finger touching the virtual keypad. “Closing ship.”
He felt the vessel quiver. The main hatch was a thick steel plate. Even with the whole Sissie as an anchor for the hydraulic jacks swinging it down, closing the hatch moved the hull as well.
Whereas the Goldenfels was many times heavier than the corvette. Well, they’d move her anyway; and with the help of luck and the good Lord, they wouldn’t wreck both ships in the process.
“Lighting thrusters,” Daniel said, starting the trickle of reaction mass into thruster throats where electrons were stripped off and the dense nuclei expelled violently.
The Sissie trembled again, this time getting a greasy, unbalanced feel. The present impulse was too little to lift the corvette’s mass, but it unloaded the vessel enough to make it feel unstable.
Daniel grinned again. It was going to get a lot worse before it got better. If in fact it got better.
The display was still green. Oh, there were details that could become important—that’s why six techs under Mr. Pasternak in the Power Room were watching the displays. Daniel had other things to attend to.
“Ship, I’m increasing thrust,” he said. He opened the feed nozzles to 20%, then edged power up to 23% until the Sissie came off the ground. Daniel slid the corvette sideways until she started to tilt on her axis. He’d drawn taut the cables connecting her to the Goldenfels; now—
“Hang on, Sissies, here we go!” Daniel said as he opened the starboard thrusters another 3%, countering the pull of the freighter’s mass. The two ships were knit together by a web of rigging cables, beryllium monocrystal of great tensile strength.
Great strength didn’t mean infinite strength. The cables weren’t meant to lift a starship, and no matter how skillful Daniel and Woetjans’ riggers were, some cables would take more of the strain than their neighbors did.
Daniel increased power, another percent on the port thrusters, 2% to starboard and then another percent on Starboard 3. He couldn’t have said why he’d fed more power to Starboard 3, couldn’t even guess, but the corvette suddenly stabilized instead of skittering like a hog on ice.
“She’s coming!” somebody shouted on the command channel. Somebody outside the ship, Chewning or Dorst, they were still on the net. “She’s—”
And then the net was clear again, a quick jerk of Adele’s control wands.
The wire-frame image of the freighter on Daniel’s display was starting to tilt on her axis. A legend would’ve given the rotation in degrees, minutes and seconds if Daniel wanted it, but he didn’t, he was controlling this by feel because there were too many variables to do it any other way.