For an instant the Goldenfels looked like a barbell, untouched amidships but her bow and stern ionized by the impacts. Then the shockwaves met in the center and left nothing but an expanding fireball.
The vision faded, or the hallucination. Daniel blinked. For a moment he couldn’t see the numbers cascading across his display as he ran course calculations.
A ship is merely a tool to be used, and if she breaks in use, well, that’s part of life. Besides, the Goldenfels was an Alliance vessel, never formally taken into RCN service.
But for a short while Lieutenant Daniel Leary had commanded her. She’d served him and Cinnabar well during that time, and against all logic he regretted her loss. Though maybe it was only hallucination. . . .
Daniel took a deep breath. He’d seen/felt/imagined a segment of missile passing through the Princess Cecile, a quartering shot that struck on the starboard counter and passed out on the port bow. The missile and the corvette didn’t exist in quite the same space-time simultaneously, but the almost-contact had made Daniel shiver for reasons that weren’t entirely psychological.
He focused on his display. The astrogational computer had calculated where the Princess Cecile was in sidereal space. Daniel sighed. He’d entered the Matrix a good minute and a half sooner than he’d intended to. On a hunch, he supposed; and he’d been correct, that flashing missile would assuredly have vaporized the corvette if he’d been even a few seconds slower. Even so, the Sissie would have to return to the sidereal universe very soon to get up to useful velocities if they were to have any real hope of escape.
The truth was, Captain Semmes was as good as Daniel Leary was, and the Bluecher was far superior in all respects to the Princess Cecile. Daniel didn’t really see how the contest was going to have a positive ending, but even the best commanders make mistakes. If Semmes made the first one, the Sissie could capitalize on it to escape. And if Daniel Leary made the mistake, well—
He grinned as he locked his helmet on again and rose from the console.
—it was hard to imagine that making their present situation worse. He supposed it was liberating, knowing that he wouldn’t have to blame himself for a bad outcome. Of course he probably wouldn’t have long for breast-beating anyway, given the velocities at which missiles travelled.
“Ship, this is Six,” he said, starting for the airlock. “I’m going out to view the Matrix and adjust our plotted course from the hull. Mr. Chewning, you’re in command of the ship, but I will be conning us through the semaphore system. Do you have any questions, over?”
Daniel wanted to rub his eyes, but it was too late—he’d closed his helmet. He was very tired, tired to the point that he felt disassociated from his body, but that wasn’t a wholly bad thing. The Matrix seemed closer when his mind could float in it.
“Aye aye, sir,” said Chewing, stolid and cheerful again. “Good hunting, over.”
“What I’m hunting for, Mr. Chewning,” Daniel said as he closed the airlock, “is a way out of this mess. Over.”
“Roger, sir,” said Chewning. “And I speak for all the crew when I say good hunting. Out.”
Daniel heard general laughter as he shut off his intercom to go out on the hull. Then the only laughter remaining was his own.
* * *
The great danger of working on the hull of a ship in the Matrix was that you’d lose your grip and sail off into alien space-times, alone for eternity. It was the riggers’ great fear, the one they’d only talk about when they were very drunk.
Adele walked across the hull with her left hand on the safety cord, her boots going click-click-click as the small magnets in the soles mated with the steel hull plating. She was careful because she was always careful doing things she wasn’t very good at, but she wasn’t especially afraid.
Death hadn’t frightened Adele since the day she learned her whole family had been executed. As for the manner of her death, the part that seemed to bother other people particularly—Adele had always felt apart from the people around her. The irony of becoming Adele Mundy, Bubble Universe, rather amused her. Not that she wanted that to happen.