Even with its main transmitter shut down, a starship is a bright emitter across the radio spectrum. Every electric motor and generator, every current-carrying wire, and even the half-watt transceivers in the crew’s commo helmets, was a broadcaster as far as Adele’s equipment was concerned.
She found a vessel just visible above the edge of the nameless, dun-colored planet, pinged its identification transponder with a modulated laser to make sure that it was the Princess Cecile and not an unpleasant surprise, and said over the command channel as she locked her laser communicator to follow its target, “Captain, this is signals. I have a channel open to the Princess Cecile if you’d like to talk to her. Over.”
Sun turned at his console to stare at her, and she heard Vesey gasp in amazement. Tovera, seated on the other side of the holographic display, gave as broad a grin as Adele ever recalled seeing on her face.
Which was slightly embarrassing, because Adele had to admit that she’d intended precisely that result. She’d prepared her search protocols long before the Goldenfels came out of the Matrix. She’d executed them as quickly as possible, not because of the danger the ship was in but because she consciously and deliberately wanted to astound everybody with her competence.
“Goldenfels Six to RCS Princess Cecile,” Daniel said, taking over the transmitter without wasting time responding to Adele’s implicit boasting. “Hold your orbit, Mr. Chewning, we’ll match velocities with you in thirteen, I say again one-three, minutes. And Mr. Chewning—get your antennas raised. We’ll be transferring personnel in vacuum rather than setting down, and I want to be able to get out of the region immediately upon accomplishing that. Goldenfels over.”
Adele felt the ship shifting, flexing a little under push of the plasma thrusters. Ordinarily that was disquieting, but she found it oddly reassuring after the omnidirectional pressure of the Matrix.
There was what seemed to Adele an extremely long delay. She realized that though she’d—though her equipment had—driven a line of sight to the Princess Cecile, she had no idea of how far the corvette was from them nor in which direction it was orbiting. Had it gone behind . . . ? No, there it was, the signal source still highlighted on her display.
“Good God, sir!” came Chewning’s voice. “That is, Sissie Six to Goldenfels Six, we’ll hold as ordered and get our antennas up. Ah, welcome back, sir. Sissie out.”
He was sending through a microwave transmitter, presumably because nobody on the Princess Cecile had been able to lock a laser on the Goldenfels to respond in that much more secure fashion. Adele pursed her lips; she’d do something about training as soon as she was back aboard the corvette.
There was a good deal of bustle behind her. The power room techs were going through the airlock to the hull.
Tovera had risen to her feet, wearing a sub-machine gun slung across her chest. Adele wondered whether she’d be able to use the weapon effectively while wearing an air suit and decided that, being Tovera, she probably would. Tovera was as soulless as a machine, but she had the virtues of a machine as well. The things she was programmed to do, she did superbly well regardless of circumstances.
Adele continued her work, dumping the information she’d gathered on the Goldenfels into the Princess Cecile’s computer. She’d only been able to review a fraction of it on the run from the Radiance system, but there’d be plenty of time for proper study when she was back aboard the Princess Cecile.
The corvette would be even more crowded than usual, she supposed, what with the former Alliance spacers added to the crew and a few Morzangan natives on the Sissie doing simple tasks. Well, that didn’t matter.
“Signals,” said the voice of brusque, calm Lieutenant Leary at the command console. “A ship has just reentered sidereal space three hundred kay miles distant. Will you query her and determine who she really is, over?”
When a ship moved between sidereal space and the Matrix, it caused a brief warping of space-time. The Goldenfels’ sensors recognized and reported the distortion on the PPI, and probably on the attack and gunnery boards as well. It hadn’t appeared on Adele’s signals display till she imported it with a twitch of her wands.