"So, Captain. ." Brantling said from a seat at the attitude-control board. "We're headed back for home, then?"
Sal scowled and for a moment continued to face the display. She realized that she had to tell her crew sometime, and they deserved better than the back of her head when she did so. She got up and faced her men. The whole crew was in the cabin.
"I've decided that we'll hold position with the fleet for a time," she said as professionally as she could manage. "Although we-"
The cheers of her crew interrupted her. Brantling clapped Harrigan on the shoulder and cried, "Hey, I told you she had too much guts to run off when there was a fight coming!"
Kokalas clapped his hands with enthusiasm and said, "We're going to pay them bastards back for Josselyn, we are."
Nedderington, who'd learned everything he could from Godden when the gunner's mate was aboard, rose from the locker holding the Gallant Sallie's meager store of 10-cm rounds and opened the lid.
"No!" said Sal. "No, we're not going in as a fighting ship. Christ's blood! we don't have but two hard suits aboard and one only fits me. All we're going to do is-"
Watch and pray.
"— render assistance to damaged vessels if necessary, and to carry out any other tasks the commander, the commanders may set us."
"We'll be following the fleet's transits, Sal?" Tom Harrigan asked. "Or. ."
"We've got the course plots, transmitted from the Venus and the Wrath both," Sal said. "We aren't. ." She paused, wondering how to phrase the description. "We haven't been ordered to accompany the fleet, but we aren't acting against the commanders' wishes, either."
"Captain?" Brantling said, pointing over Sal's shoulder.
She spun. The Federation globe was dissolving in sequential transit. The Wrath vanished, then a dozen more of the largest and best-crewed Venerian ships.
"Stand by to transit," Sal said as she dropped back into the navigation console, engaging the AI. An orange border surrounded the display. Five seconds later, the Gallant Sallie-
Transit. Sal saw the cabin as a black-and-white negative, but that was only the construct her mind built of familiar surroundings to steady itself.
Starscape. The Gallant Sallie's display was set for real visuals, not icons representing the confronting fleets, but at the previous range there was little visible difference. Ships had been glimmers in starlight, varying by albedo rather than absolute size.
Now the fleets and the Gallant Sallie with them had closed considerably. In the fraction of a second after Sal's eyes adjusted to the sidereal universe again, she could see the Wrath as an object, blotched from previous damage. Two of the starboard gunports were open because the lids had jammed or were shattered by fire.
Transit. Sarah Blythe had made her first transit when she was two years old. The feeling had never really disturbed her the way she knew it did others.
Starscape. The two fleets on the display were nearly a single mass. The Federation globe very nearly rested on a lumpy plain of Venerian ships. At this moment Federation AIs would be screaming collision warnings.
The Fed captains knew the real threat was not impact with the tightly controlled first line of the Venerian fleet. They had the choice of overriding the next programmed transit or having their thrusters ripped out by point-blank plasma bolts. Some of the Federation officers were experienced enough to have expected this result as soon as they saw how much more maneuverable their opponents were. Their commander was sure to have a planned response.
The squished and gaping Fed formation vanished raggedly. The Venerian fleet didn't move. Sal disconnected the sequencer.
The Gallant Sallie's AI was very nearly as powerful as those of the Wrath and her sister ships, let alone the armed merchantmen that made up the bulk of the Venerian force. Sal would have a solution within a few minutes, whether or not one was relayed from the dedicated warships.
"What's happening?" Rickalds said, panic growing with each syllable. "Ma'am, they're getting away!"
"They're not getting nowhere!" Tom Harrigan snarled contemptuously. "They're running with their tails between their legs 'cause we cut them off. As soon as the computer tells us where they ran to, why, we'll jump right after them. And I shouldn't wonder if we had 'em right by the balls, as strung out as they're going to be!"
The artificial intelligence bordered the screen with blue and threw up a blue sidebar. The complex calculations of the latter were too minute to read.
Sal didn't need to know where the course would take them. All that was important was that it would take them in pursuit of the Feds, in company with the men who would crush the tyrant's force or die.
"Prepare for transit!" she ordered, engaging the sequencer.
"Course received from the Wrath, ma'am!" Cooney called from the adjunct communications module at the back of the cabin.
"We've got our own course!" Sal said. The screen's border went orange.
Transit.
Starscape. She couldn't see the Federation fleet. The Feds had a lead of the minutes it took the Gallant Sallie to compute their course. A Venerian ship was present, though: the Wrath. A dozen more, a score more, Venerian vessels winked into sight.
Transit.
Starscape.
Transit. Brantling's reversed image stared tensely from Sal's mind, though she hadn't been looking at him or even toward the back of the cabin.
Starscape, but partly masked by a planet looming across the sky. The Federation ships were in orbit or already beginning landing approaches.
"Bloody hell!" Tom Harrigan said as he made the identification a fraction of a second before Sal herself did. "That's Heldensburg! The port governor's letting the Feds land on Heldensburg!"
Venerian warships appeared and immediately accelerated through sidereal space toward the scattered Feds. The intended attacks were unplanned and thus far uncoordinated.
"The governor, La Fouche, he's a fan of Pleyal's," Sal remarked. "I remember what the cargo supervisor told us."
Her fingers set the AI to determine a course that would hold the Gallant Sallie stationary in respect to the planet below. "I wonder-"
One of Heldensburg's 30-cm cannon sent a bolt across the Wrath's bow. The round probably wasn't aimed to hit. It was simply a warning that a Venerian attempt to interfere with the Feds here would have Heldensburg's ship-smashing port defenses to contend with. The Wrath drew away from its target, a big Fed vessel braking from orbit.
The Venerians no longer had to wonder how Port Governor La Fouche would interpret his nation's neutrality in a war between Venus and the North American Federation.
ABOVE HELDENSBURG
October 2, Year 27
1333 hours, Venus time
"Oh, this is too bad!" Commander Bruckshaw said, glaring at the hundreds of ships indicated on the display in the conference room of the Venus. "Why, this should never have been permitted to happen!"
Stephen was more amused than not by the sight of so many private vessels, probably everything on Venus capable of the short journey to Heldensburg. The ships had come from every port on the planet as soon as a courier brought word home that the Feds had gone to ground on Heldensburg.
Some of the ships carried supplies and munitions, the way the Gallant Sallie had done a few days before, but many captains were motivated simply by a desire to get in a blow of their own against the Federation. The light guns the merchantmen mounted made them as useless in a real battle as their hulls were vulnerable.