WITH THE LIGHTNINGS(129)

Dasi shrugged, though the loose-fitting atmosphere suit barely quivered. "They can try, but I don't guess they're going to do much across forty thousand miles. You know how plasma spreads."

The cutter had a single thruster. The deck quivered as the nozzle gimbaled around. When the thruster fired at its new heading Adele found herself hanging from the strap as the bulkhead tried to accelerate away from her. The plasma flow's high-frequency vibration made dust shimmer in the air.

Adele tried to settle herself. That was impossible while wearing an atmosphere suit. The suits were meant for transfer in vacuum, not work. They were awkward, uncomfortable constructions of rubberized fabric with stiffening hoops. One size fit all—in Adele's case, fit very badly. The gauntlets separately clamped to the cuffs came in three sizes, though for Adele a pair marked SMALL wasn't.

The helmets were plastic castings shaped like the bottoms of test tubes, clear on the front and with round lenses like miniature portholes on either side. Aboard the cutter the Cinnabars wore the helmets open on the hinge at the back of the neck. They had no communication equipment, nor was the plastic clear enough for piloting a spacecraft.

"Think we're worth a missile?" Barnes wondered aloud. Neither of the men seemed concerned, either by the situation or by Adele's state of mind.

"A little tub like this?" Dasi scoffed. "No! Though she handles pretty good, don't she?"

"The captain's launching," Woetjans said. Adele couldn't place the emotion she heard in the petty officer's voice. "He's taking the cruiser away from us, I guess."

"God have mercy!" Lamsoe muttered over the plasma whine. "That big bastard'll eat them alive."

His fingers moved on his control keys. The flow cut abruptly. The thruster pivoted again, then resumed firing. In a tone of professional detachment Lamsoe went on, "One minute thirty to docking."

All four sailors stared at the display. Woetjans stood beside the control console, gripping attachments because she wasn't strapped in. Barnes and Dasi, facing one another in jump seats, leaned forward for a better view.

Adele could see the display past the pilot's shoulder, but it meant absolutely nothing to her. The full-sized console aboard the Princess Cecile had been simple to understand. When three dimensions were flattened to two, they became an alien world. It horrified her to realize that Barnes and Dasi, who (not to be unkind) between them might approximately equal her intelligence, watched with full appreciation the data which passed before her in a cascade of gibberish.

"Missed!" Dasi said. "Shit, they weren't even close!"

Barnes shook his close-cropped head in dismay. "Well, the captain's young," he said. "Not everybody's born to be an attack officer."

Woetjans turned toward them in fury. "How about shutting the fuck up, will you?" she said. "Did you ever think he just spit a couple missiles out in a hurry because our asses was in a sling?"

"That Alliance bastard didn't even maneuver," Dasi said in disappointment. "Missed 'em clean, and there's only ten missiles aboard."

"Eight now," Barnes agreed sadly.

Adele felt cold. If Woetjans was correct, it was an even more damning indictment of Lt. Daniel Leary that he hadn't used the available time to set up his initial attack on the cruiser/minelayer. She couldn't believe that: she'd watched Daniel updating his launch sequence throughout the time they were on the bridge together.

No, Daniel wasn't slack. He just wasn't very good at that part of his job. He'd told her that his Uncle Stacey hadn't been a fighting officer for all his courage and skill in other aspects of spacefaring. Apparently Daniel had that part of the Bergen heritage as well.

It was unfortunate that they were all learning this in the middle of a battle. Though perhaps that didn't matter. The sailors obviously thought the battle was unwinnable to begin with.

"Docking!" Lamsoe warned. He lifted his hands from the controls and swung his helmet into place.

Automatic systems took control of this final portion of the journey. Adele felt the cutter rotate minusculely under the impulse of the maneuvering jets, steam rather than plasma. Even for the experts she assumed this Cinnabar crew were, the process of manual docking would be a maddening, time-consuming task.

She reached for her own helmet. The hinge was at the back of her neck so she couldn't see what she was doing. Dasi's big hand gently brushed hers away.

"Hunch a bit, mistress," the sailor said. Adele tried to obey but the edge of the helmet still grazed her forehead as it pivoted down over her head.

There was a click and a cool pressure as the helmet sealed. The oxygen bottle switched on. Simultaneously Adele felt the rasp of the cutter's docking mechanism interlocking with its mate on the command node's surface.