Tenacious

34

Kris found the tame aliens in their eggs, huddled together. The Marines had backed off as much as Condition Charlie let them. The drop bay was a lot smaller.

Come Condition Zed, the unique equipment on the longboats would be boxed up like Mother MacCreedy’s best whiskey and that Smart Metal^TM would be shipped off to reinforce the hull’s armor. Of the drop bay, there wouldn’t be enough left for a broom closet.

Kris would have to come up with another place to park her charges if it came to a fight.

She rolled up to the graybeard. He was reclining in his egg, but he spotted her and brought it up a bit. ~When can I hunt again?~

~It will be many sunsets.~ Kris had learned that if it was good news you brought, you used “sunrise,” while bad news got the “sunset” treatment.

~Why can I not hunt again?~

Now a lot of the tribe had raised their eggs up to get a better look at Kris. A Marine sergeant edged away from the wall and rolled up behind her.

NELLY, TELL THE MARINES, THANK YOU, BUT STAY COOL.

DONE, KRIS.

The Marine sergeant didn’t back away, but he came no closer.

~What do you do when someone grabs your knife and runs away with it?~ Kris asked.

~I run after him and take it back,~ the old man said. ~If he is a child, I show him the right path for his feet. If he is a man, I knock the right path into him.~

~A woman has grabbed one of my ships for walking among the stars and ran away with it. I am running after her. I will knock the right path into her.~

~Hmm,~ was the graybeard’s only response.

The wisewoman turned her head in her egg to better look at Kris with deep black eyes. Kris returned the gaze, unblinking. Had she given away that she was not all-powerful? Or was the woman more interested in how one might run away with a ship to walk among the stars?

Maybe you should have let the boy die, girl.

That wasn’t going to happen, Kris answered her own doubts.

Kris returned to her quarters. They would hit the jump in the middle of their night. For now, she’d better catch a nap.

“By the way, Nelly, does that freighter we’re chasing, the Sisu, have any lasers?”

“Yes, Kris, it has a pair of short-range 18-inch pulse lasers.”

“But if she’s waiting for us on the other side of the jump, range won’t be all that important, will it?”

“No, Kris, but Sampson has a lot of energy on her boat. Turning it around and getting back to the jump to hit us as we come through would not be a likely prospect. With seven ships following you, it certainly would not be a winning proposition.”

Kris considered that and chose the nap.

Jack woke her an hour before they were to hit the jump.

“Did they get a good look at our renegade when it made its jump?” Kris asked.

“The Sisu, out of the Scanda Confederation planet of the same name,” Nelly reported, “jacked its acceleration up to 2.5 gees fifteen seconds before it jumped. It went through the jump at forty revolutions, counterclockwise.”

“It appears our girl did her homework,” Jack said.

“Do you know where she jumped to?” Kris asked Nelly.

“There are three systems I think she might have ended up in. Two have fuzzy jumps. I don’t know if the Sisu has the gear to spot them, Kris.”

“We’ll just have to wait and see if we end up in the same system with her and where she’s headed, now won’t we?”

“Patience is a virtue. You should develop it sometime, Your High-handedness,” Nelly said.

“Nelly, I have to put up with that lip from Abby. Just because she’s not here doesn’t mean you have to give it to me.”

“I know. But now that I have had the chance, I enjoy giving it to you all on my own.”

“Kris, may I suggest you stop while you’re behind?” Jack said.

Since they were alone, Kris stuck her tongue out at Jack.

“Do that again when we aren’t parboiled in these damn eggs and see what it gets you.”

Kris grinned. “I’m thinking of it.”

“Well, quit. It’s all going to waste.”

On that note, they motored out onto the bridge.

Captain Drago, looking somewhat better for having napped as well, motored out of his in-space cabin and took his place at the center of his hive. “Anything change while I was catching a few z’s?”

“Nothing has happened at the jump since the Sisu used it,” the navigator reported.

“Did sensors give us their feed on the Sisu’s status as it jumped?”

“Yes, Captain. We have the exact velocity within ten centimeters a second. Their RPMs were a ragged 39.64 per minute. They were accelerating at 2.47 gees for 14.71 seconds before the jump. All this is loaded in every ship in the fleet. Phil Taussig of the Hornet asks if we should all attempt the same jump or would it be better to have ships vary a bit around it for ‘Kentucky windage,’ whatever that is.”

“Nelly?” Kris said.

“I have looked up ‘Kentucky windage,’ and no, I don’t think there is enough of a chance of our numbers being off for us to split the fleet. My estimate of us following Sampson’s course approach unity.”

“Send to Hornet. ‘Good idea, Phil, but our Nelly windage beats Kentucky windage every time, Longknife sends.’”

“Kris,” Nelly asked, “would you like to hear what Sampson had to say just before she jumped?”

“Will her deathless prose surprise me?”

“Not likely.”

“Well, let’s see what was on her mind, anyway. It might prove useful.”

“Longknife, you’ll never catch me. You’ll never follow me. I’m on my way back to Wardhaven, and when I get there, it will be you up on charges. You’ll never get your privileged ass out of jail for the rest of your life.”

“And here I thought her ass was just as privileged as mine.”

“Except she is an ass,” Jack said.

“Who is running headlong into who knows what,” Captain Drago added.

“Yes. So, Nelly, you say she’s wrong about our not being able to follow her.”

“Definitely.”

“And she’s wrong about our not being able to catch her.”

“My Marines are waiting to make the catch,” Jack said.

“Well then, let’s go get her,” Kris said.

The squadron leveled off from its dive back down to the system plane a solid half hour out from the jump. It finished its braking five minutes out. Two minutes out, Nelly was satisfied that they were duplicating the Sisu’s velocity and acceleration to the thirteenth decimal place.

Kris hardly breathed as they made the final approach to the jump, put on a matching spin, and jacked up their acceleration to duplicate exactly how Sampson had done her jump.