“Will we be all right?” Adele asked. She hoped she didn’t sound frightened; she wasn’t, after all, she was just curious. What happened if they ran out of reaction mass?
“Oh, heavens, yes,” Daniel said. “Only we’re down to 58%, which means we’ll have to make at least one landfall before we reach Todos Santos.”
He coughed and continued, speaking with a degree of reserve, “Chewning did a fine job, a very professional job, but instead of orbiting at the rendezvous point, he kept the power on to maintain artificial gravity. He’s experienced, but he’d never seen action before. I don’t think I sufficiently emphasized to him that in war the only things you can count on are the ones you hold in your hand.”
“Daniel?” Adele said. He’d brought it up himself, noting that the Sissie was a private yacht. “Have you considered what will happen if the Commonwealth government lodges a formal complaint? We’re not at war with the Alliance, not officially, and very likely there were Commonwealth citizens killed at Lorenz Base also.”
This wasn’t something she wanted to talk about, but she felt she had to. There were no secrets within a starship, especially a small ship like the Princess Cecile carrying thirty-odd crew in addition to her Table of Organization. Out here on the hull, though, no one could overhear what she had to say.
“Yes,” said Daniel. “That what we did was technically piracy, you mean?”
He snorted, then went on, “Call a spade a spade—it was piracy, of course. I thought about the fact that the Goldenfels rather than a Cinnabar-registered ship made the attack, but the story’ll get out after we dock. Assuming matters go as we hope they will in the Radiance system and afterwards, of course, so that we do get back.”
Daniel looked at the heavens, reached for the semaphore control, and brought his hand back without touching it. He leaned his helmet against hers and said, “Adele, I never had the stomach for politics, but Speaker Leary’s son isn’t going to grow up without knowing how the game’s played. I understand very well that the best result so far as the government of Cinnabar is concerned would be if the Princess Cecile vanished without a trace and the attack on Lorenz Base remained a mystery. Guarantor Porra would be more than happy to suppress the news, I’m sure. But . . .”
He turned his face upward again, though this time Adele was by no means sure it was anything within the Matrix that Daniel was focusing on. Touching her helmet again, he said, “Adele, every soul aboard the Princess Cecile trusts me to get them home. I don’t know that I’m going to succeed—our trick of backtracking wouldn’t have fooled me, and I don’t expect it’ll fool Captain Semmes either. But I owe the Sissies more than I owe Cinnabar, and by God! if I fail them, it won’t be for want of trying.”
“No,” said Adele. “Nobody who knows you would imagine anything else, Daniel.”
And just maybe, God was on the side of Cinnabar.
CHAPTER 32
“—now!” said Daniel’s voice over the general channel, and everything except the interior of Adele’s mind blurred in what had become a familiarly horrible fashion. Transition was worse than travel in the Matrix, and that was uncomfortable enough.
Adele thought for a moment about the times in her life when she hadn’t been uncomfortable. There’d been many of them, long periods in fact, but they all involved her being lost in her studies or her work. It was difficult to work while the starship was in transition, but perhaps she ought to try harder in the future.
The Princess Cecile had been three days on the voyage from the rendezvous point—Salmson Catalog 115A3 but otherwise unnamed—to Radiance, a distance the Goldenfels had covered in a little over a day. The difference was the ship’s velocity at the time they entered the Matrix. They could’ve dropped back into normal space to increase speed once they’d gotten clear of the Bluecher—Dorst had asked about the possibility—but Daniel had preferred to take the longer, less exposed route.
As Adele knew from their private conversations, Daniel didn’t believe they had gotten clear of the Bluecher. While the Princess Cecile was in the Matrix, she couldn’t be touched by an enemy who, no matter how skillful, was literally in another universe.