The cruiser had waited in an unpowered orbit so she was slow getting under weigh, but the acceleration of her missiles meant the launching vessel’s speed didn’t matter. The Sissie could keep Radiance between her and the Bluecher for the time being, but she couldn’t get away; and when the cruiser got moving, the corvette couldn’t hide either.
Daniel watched the PPI as an incoming missile’s curving track changed from purple to blue—then stopped abruptly when it intersected a Commonwealth warship. Daniel had factored in the other vessels, but the Alliance missileer had not. The victim bloomed as a varicolored fireball, not only superheated metal but the propellant and warheads of its rockets.
Another Commonwealth ship launched three salvos of forty-eight rockets apiece at the Bluecher. The range was too great for the primitive Commonwealth fire control computer, but the sheafs of tiny projectiles caused three more of the country craft to launch also. As soon as they’d emptied their external rocket racks, they dived for the surface of Radiance.
Daniel continued maneuvering to keep the planet between the Princess Cecile and the cruiser. He was dropping deeper into the gravity well also so that Radiance subtended a broader arc. It was a temporary expedient at best, since they were only ten thousand miles above the surface. That was a considerable altitude under most circumstances but a matter of minutes when it’s your lifeline.
He’d expected to lose realtime imagery of the Bluecher as soon as he put the Sissie behind the planet, but there was no gap in coverage after all: the cruiser continued to be visible as a blur in the midst of ionized exhaust. Adele was importing a signal, probably from Lorenz Base. Commonwealth observation satellites were unlikely to be this clear if they even existed. How had she been able to do that?
But thank God she had!
Semmes had been accelerating on High Drive, but he cut in his plasma thrusters when the Bluecher became the target of hundreds of unguided rockets. Daniel judged his enemy’s new course and adjusted the Sissie to stay in the planet’s shadow in this deadly game of hide and seek.
Three Commonwealth ships unloaded their rockets at the cruiser, then two more. Great heavens, Daniel hadn’t imagined a reaction anything like this when he tricked the Bluecher into destroying a country craft! He hadn’t imagined the Commonwealth vessels could react that quickly even if they’d wanted to. It was as if they’d been waiting for an excuse to launch on an allied vessel!
More ships were rising from Radiance. Daniel couldn’t tell whether they were civilian or more naval units; the only external difference was the bundles of rockets on naval vessels, easily overlooked among the folded rigging. Captain Semmes must not have been able to tell either, for the Bluecher suddenly opened fire on them with her 15-cm plasma cannon.
Daniel supposed Semmes was simply trying to discourage another irritating rocket volley, because nobody’d expect serious results from plasma cannon at a range of several hundred thousand miles. The guns were for defensive purposes, to deflect incoming missiles which couldn’t be dodged. The country craft were so fragile, however, that the concentrated hammering of six cannon—only three of the cruiser’s turrets bore on the target—caused the victim to stagger and curl back into the atmosphere.
A handful of Commonwealth rockets suddenly detonated against the Bluecher. The cruiser’s image sparkled like a butterfly’s wing shaking off scales. The rockets’ small fragmentation warheads were meant to destroy an enemy vessel’s masts and rigging so that it couldn’t escape—or pursue, depending on who was pirate and who was prey during a given engagement. They wouldn’t seriously damage the hull of a country craft, let alone the thick plates of an Alliance heavy cruiser.
But nobody likes to be shot at, to have the steel around him ring with slamming explosions followed by the sizzle of fragments that ricocheted among the rigging. Maybe it was for that reason that the Bluecher’s gunnery officer began ripping another rising Commonwealth ship instead of turning the concentrated fire of his cannon on a projectile from the Princess Cecile as he should’ve done.
The segment hit a stowed dorsal antenna, erupting in a white-hot spray like the tail of a comet nearing the sun. The damage wasn’t serious, but everybody aboard the Bluecher knew that it could’ve been: that a course different by a matter of meters would’ve gutted the cruiser and left her adrift for the salvage teams.