Adele’s equipment told her that the radio transmissions were coming from three Alliance destroyers, the Max Schultze, Richard Beitzen, and Paul Jacobi. The information appeared automatically, in the sense that she’d set the system to provide names and schematic data whenever it correlated an identification transponder with a particular unit of the Alliance Fleet. Her console echoed the readout to Daniel and the Battle Direction Center.
It didn’t have any effect on the battle, however, because of the arcing destruction the first two 15-cm bolts loosed within the hangar. The six that followed before forward motion carried the Goldenfels past the narrow opening were probably a waste of ammunition, since at least one fusion bottle had ruptured almost instantly.
A gush of radiance, ionized vapor instead of light, flashed from the hangar. This time it didn’t blow the doors off. Instead the cliff face bulged upward, shot through by glowing gases, and shuddered down toward the crater floor. As it did so, the missile struck home in the center of SW 4. The explosions inside that hangar were just getting started when the avalanche flowed over the doors of both in a dance of rock and dust and the sparkling highlights of plasma that leaked through the cascade.
“Launcher One’s reloaded, sir!” rasped a voice on the command channel, Woetjans speaking instead of Belknap. The rumble of the heavy missiles usually shook the ship unmistakably, but Adele hadn’t noticed it this time.
“Thank you, Woetjans,” Daniel replied in a hoarse, breathy voice. “Sun, cease fire. All personnel who don’t have Power Room duties, put yourself under the bosun. Woetjans will take charge of damage control.”
He paused, sucking in air with a gasp that his helmet microphone took for speech and transmitted. “Mistress Vesey,” Daniel resumed, “get us out of here as quickly as you can, please. I’ll plot us a course into the Matrix, but I’m not ready to do that right now.”
The Goldenfels was accelerating hard, pushing Adele down on her couch. She remembered her first view of the raider, a halo of plasma thrusters blazing above the Princess Cecile. That was the view the survivors of Lorenz Base had of her now.
She glanced toward the command console. Daniel caught her eye, grinned, and raised a thumb in greeting.
His face sobered slightly and he resumed, “Ship, this is Six. Spacers, an hour ago an Alliance squadron of two battleships, a heavy cruiser, and eight destroyers ruled the whole Galactic North. Because of your skill and courage, the elements of that squadron are either destroyed or so damaged that it’ll take a year to dig out and refit the survivors. If the RCN can’t get a proper force out here in a year to finish the job, then by God! you and I will come back and do it for them!”
Daniel paused for the laughter he knew was sounding. Adele smiled faintly, wondering if she ought to cut Daniel back into the intercom channel so he could hear his crew’s enthusiastic congratulations. On balance, no; he had more work to do, he’d said, plotting a course.
“Fellow spacers,” Daniel said, “Fellow Sissies—God bless you, and God bless the RCN!”
“Sir!” Vesey announced unexpectedly. “A ship has just returned to normal space 400,000 miles out. They’re querying Lorenz Base in code, over.”
Adele’s face lost expression as she raised her couch upright to make her work easier. They’d be switching shortly to the High Drive, which in its present jury-rigged state couldn’t manage much more than one gravity’s acceleration anyway. Her wands quivered.
Sun, Belknap, Vesey and Pasternak were all speaking on the command channel. Daniel was not: he’d brought up the navigation screen. The Plot Position Indicator was inset into it.
Instead of speaking, Adele flashed a text message at the bottom of every active display:
The ship which has just appeared is the Alliance heavy cruiser Bluecher, which is returning to Lorenz Base after a short workup cruise.
She didn’t add any commentary to the flat statement. It seemed obvious to her that though it’d take the Bluecher’s commander, Captain-of-Space Rafael Semmes, a while to realize what had happened at the base and to begin pursuing the Goldenfels, it would be only a little while.