Sun was at the gunnery station, leaving Dorst to handle the Princess Cecile’s plasma cannon. That wasn’t a bad situation. The midshipman lacked Sun’s experience, but he had a natural gift for weapons and—perhaps more important—had shown himself completely unflappable.
Chief Missileer Betts had remained aboard the Princess Cecile. Daniel would control the Goldenfels’ missiles himself. The alternative would’ve required Chewning to act as the corvette’s missileer, and all he knew how to do was rubberstamp the attack board’s solutions—a near guarantee of failure. There was as much art to missile-slinging as there was to astrogation, Adele knew from listening to crewmen talk; and she knew also that Betts himself considered Daniel a master of that art.
Of course the Princess Cecile wouldn’t be in a position where she needed her missiles if things went as planned, but the chance of that happening wasn’t even worth a laugh. Thinking of the possibility of perfection, Adele chuckled.
“Goldenfels Six, this is Sissie Six,” said Mr. Chewning. He sounded earnest and a little nervous, like a small child presenting his class project. “Sir, the Princess Cecile is ready to lift and proceed to the rendezvous location. Over.”
Daniel had drafted the majority of the corvette’s riggers to his new command, but Chewning had the relatively simple task of taking the Princess Cecile to an orbit above an uninhabited—but marginally habitable—planet at roughly a day’s voyage from Radiance. The Sissie’s High Drive installation was undamaged, so even without Daniel’s expertly-nuanced astrogation and Woetjans and her full team to execute the details, the Princess Cecile should be in position long before the Goldenfels arrived.
“Roger, Sissie Six,” Daniel said. “I hope we’ll see you again in approximately ten days. Good luck to you and your crew, Mr. Chewning. Goldenfels Six out.”
“Good luck and good hunting, sir!” Chewning replied. “Sissie Six out!”
Daniel took a deep breath and shook himself in his harness. He saw Adele looking at him and gave her a thumbs-up, then returned his attention to his display.
“Ship, this is Six,” he said over the intercom. “Prepare for lift-off. Lighting thrusters—” his finger stabbed “—now!”
Adele leaned back in her acceleration couch as the plasma thrusters lit with a bone-deep growl. She wouldn’t see solid ground again till the Goldenfels reached the Radiance system.
She grinned again. If then.
CHAPTER 28
Radiance was a bright spot in the panoramic starfield at the top of Daniel’s display; Gehenna was a similar bead 30 degrees to clockwise along the ecliptic. Either could have passed for an unusually bright star to an inexpert eye, but Daniel would’ve picked out the planet and satellite by their slight proper motion during the ninety-seven minutes he’d been waiting for the picket boat to clear the Goldenfels to land.
The picket had just arrived, a 600-ton country craft whose antennas had been removed. Instead of making the vessel look sleeker Daniel found the result ugly and disfigured, like a man with cropped ears.
Though the picket was unarmed, its real duty was to act as trigger for the Planetary Defense Array orbiting not Radiance but rather its satellite Gehenna. If there’d been any doubts about there being an active base on Gehenna, the presence of a newly-installed Alliance minefield would’ve dispelled them. The Commonwealth homeworld itself was only incidentally covered by the array centered on the satellite, 730,000 miles from its primary.
“Four persons are boarding the scooter,” Adele announced from her console. She was using her unaided voice across the stillness instead of speaking over the intercom; Daniel didn’t know whether that was for security reasons—Adele was listening to low-power transmissions within the picket boat—or if she just preferred to talk normally when that was possible. “Three are Commonwealth personnel, a naval officer and two spacers. The fourth is Lieutenant Caravaggio of the Alliance Fleet, officially an advisor to the local authorities.”
She coughed, keeping her eyes on her display instead of turning to look at her companions on the bridge as she spoke. “The guardship is named the House of Peace, but its crew and their control in the base on Gehenna refer to it as the Outhouse.”
Daniel unlatched his shock harness, though he didn’t get up from his couch just yet. “Sun,” he said, “take your pipper off the picket boat. I don’t want our friends to feel threatened when they board us in a few minutes.”