“Belknap, get Launcher One reloaded!” Daniel ordered. “Woetjans, give him all the help he needs. I don’t care what it takes to do it—rip a hole in the hull plating if you have to, but get me missiles again!”
Belknap, a Missileer 2d Class, was the highest ranking member of his specialty aboard the Goldenfels. It was his duty to handle the mechanics of the missiles while Daniel himself programmed their courses. Belknap had a pair of Missileer Threes under him, but what clearing the trackway required was brute force. The riggers were temporarily off duty, and they were very familiar with brute force.
Vesey’d fought the freighter steady again, then readjusted the course to the 349 degrees as Daniel had ordered—the blast had skewed them well to starboard. You don’t expect a gust of wind on an airless satellite, particularly a white-hot squall sparkling with the hellfire of its creation.
They were three-quarters of the way across the broad crater, holding at 18 feet per second. That would’ve been perfect to finish the destruction of Lorenz Base in one pass if things had gone the way they were supposed to—
But they hadn’t. Well, that wasn’t a new experience in the RCN, and it wasn’t an excuse for doing half what was required and running.
“Mistress Vesey,” Daniel ordered, “bring us around if you will. We’ll proceed on a reciprocal and finish the job.”
Then, beaming a smile beneath his faceshield, Daniel added, “By God, Sissies, they’ll talk about this one for as long as there’s an RCN—and there’ll be an RCN for as long as it can recruit spacers like you!”
* * *
They won’t talk about us unless somebody survives to tell them! Adele thought tartly, but it wasn’t her place to say that.
Besides, it wasn’t true. There’d be Alliance survivors, and they’d tell the story. They’d use words like “fools” and “lucky,” but it wasn’t a story that could be hidden.
In truth, there hadn’t been much luck involved in the business. Adele wasn’t disposed to quarrel with “fools,” though. Not that it mattered to her.
Everybody was jabbering on the intercom; Adele ignored the chatter except to make sure that none of the empty nonsense was getting to Daniel. She set the feeds so that all the crew could watch the external visuals if they had the time. They probably didn’t—damage control should occupy everyone who wasn’t directly involved in the battle—but it was part of her job.
Adele had access to all the traffic within Lorenz Base, because she’d used the Goldenfels’ signals suite to convince Base Control that the ship’s computer was its back-up installation. That pretty piece of work had given her a degree of satisfaction, but it wasn’t as useful as she’d initially hoped. The Alliance personnel were babbling the same sort of inanities as the Sissies were, though theirs were tinged with panic.
Sun was shooting with both turrets, but thank goodness the guns on the sides were silent. When they’d begun to fire, Adele had thought the Goldenfels was blowing up. When two or more of the cannon discharged simultaneously, her display lost resolution for an instant; each time it happened, she’d feared that her console itself would fail instead of just the hologram projectors losing alignment.
Adele wasn’t afraid to die, but she was terrified of failing Daniel and the others who depended on her. Without access to her computer, she would fail.
She smiled coldly. There were other consoles, of course. And worst case, she could probably link her handheld unit to the ship’s main transceiver and do a respectable job of providing the Goldenfels’ officers with signals intelligence.
Tovera sat on the couch of the console coupled back-to-back with Adele’s; it was meant for a junior to emulate the officer at the main unit. The junior would take over in event of battle damage to the electronics or the officer, either one.
Tovera hadn’t brought the console live; she was simply using the couch as a seat while she waited for something that suited her talents. Those would be few and far between in an action of this sort, but she’d stepped over to snap a mask down over Adele’s face when something massive hit the ship.