Adele let the cheers sound over the general push, though they almost drowned out the mumbled words of Captain Semmes surrendering unconditionally.
CHAPTER 33
“Ship,” said Daniel, “this is Six. We’ll be extracting from the Matrix above Todos Santos in a few minutes.”
Adele shielded him from the chatter on the intercom, but because of the Sissie’s internal hush at this point in a voyage he heard spacers shouting, “Yee-haw!” and “Booze and women!” followed a moment later by Maginnes calling, “You can keep the women—this time I want a pretty little boy who’s hung like a pony!”
Maginnes was a rigger, waiting in her suit at the airlock with the rest of the starboard watch in case Woetjans and the port watch unexpectedly needed help lowering the minimal sail set with which the corvette had made this last leg of the run. Daniel thought of her, a squat stump of a woman with a face like a pug dog, and the pretty boy she wanted. But Maginnes was a spacer with money in her pocket, and she’d get whatever she wanted until the money ran out.
“Now listen, Sissies,” Daniel said, smiling in the knowledge that though he commanded this crew, they were his family as surely as he was part of theirs. “When we left Todos Santos we were on friendly terms with everybody except some folks from Pleasaunce. Those folks aren’t around any more.”
He paused for laughter.
“But a lot can change in a month,” he continued. “Just ask the garrison of Lorenz Base about that if you don’t believe me.”
More laughter. They’d been through a lot this voyage. The Sissies never doubted that Daniel was captain, but this was a good time for him to remind them that he was their captain, the man who wouldn’t send them any place he wouldn’t go himself.
“There may have been political changes here,” he said. He ignored the cries about wogs. “And there may well be an Alliance ship in port, in which case we won’t stay any longer than it takes me to input the course data I’ve already prepared.”
They’d have been safer if they’d remained in company with the Aristoxenos. Alliance warships might be willing to disregard the Cluster government long enough to overwhelm an RCN corvette, but not in front of a Cluster battleship. Though seriously battered by the strains of the Matrix and explosive failures in her own armaments, the Zanie remained an impressive sight.
Daniel had come alone because the Aristoxenos had only six High Drive motors functioning out of the original forty-eight. Her systems rated a complement of nearly a thousand, but her present crew was two hundred and fifty former RCN crewmen, supplemented by an equal number of their retainers who didn’t have any experience off-planet. The Ten Star Cluster had no lack of experienced spacers, but only a handful of them had been willing to sign on with the decayed battleship. Not even those few would’ve boarded if they’d been told the details of a plan they’d have found insane.
The Aristoxenos had been lucky to arrive off Radiance as quickly as she did, and it’d take her longer to get home. The Princess Cecile would’ve added a minimum of nine days to her voyage if she’d returned to Todos Santos with the battleship.
“We’ve taken enough chances this voyage, Sissies,” Daniel said. “I don’t want to put us through more.”
“Six, this is Five,” Chewning announced in an apologetic voice from the Battle Direction Center. “We’ll be reentering normal space in—one minute. Over.”
“Roger, Mr. Chewning,” Daniel said. “Break. Ship, prepare to return to sidereal space—”
He pressed the control.
“—now!”
The Princess Cecile shuddered into sidereal space like a fish swimming through transparent glycerine instead of water. Daniel wasn’t really worried about what would happen over Todos Santos unless colossal bad luck brought them out of the Matrix within spitting distance of an Alliance warship.
Nobody should be looking for them here. People would notice the corvette’s arrival and some might have hostile intentions, but Daniel had full confidence in Adele’s ability to identify a problem in time for the Sissie to escape. They’d refilled their tanks of reaction mass on an uninhabited world a day out from here. They could make it to Cinnabar on their present load if they had to, though it’d mean short rations by the time they arrived.