Tenacious

41

Kris moved her war council down to the wardroom; her stomach was rumbling on empty. It was a pretty lame supper. Apparently Cookie was saving the steaks, either for the aliens aboard or for a victory celebration. Today’s meal was reconstituted, canned, and hard to identify.

Quickly, Nelly brought everyone up to date.

“You’re dropping yourself right into the middle of their politics,” Jacques said. “From the looks of it, that’s a real maelstrom.”

“And my alternative was to let them get their world war underway and deliver their wrecked planet on a platter to the aliens,” Kris countered.

Jacques winced. No one else offered any further insight.

“Nelly, how is the message going over?” Penny asked. She had her own computer, Mimzy, but when you wanted the counsel of all the computers, you asked Nelly.

“They seem to be taking it differently, in different zones. The media on that one that was getting its elite out of the target areas got ahold of the story, and now everyone is panicked. The other large zone has released the entire report to its media and is organizing evacuations from their cities by the license number on their personal vehicles. They put ten numbers in a hat and drew out a three. Only vehicles with plates that end in three can use the main roads out of towns today. They’ll pull another number tomorrow morning.”

“And they haven’t even seen the aliens yet,” Amanda said. “They’re still behind the sun.”

“We aren’t,” Jack pointed out. “They may be evacuating for fear of an attack from us.”

“Well, at least they’re running from ground zero,” Penny said.

“There are three major zones,” Masao said. “What about the other?”

“That one is run by a Leader for Life, and there’s not a lot officially happening. He runs a centrally controlled country, and he apparently hasn’t decided what to do yet. He is now holding a meeting in a bunker under a mountain. Lots of his cronies are with him there.”

“How do you know this?” Jacques asked Nelly. “If he’s running a locked-down dictatorship, you can’t be getting this off the media like the other places.”

“No,” Nelly said, and you could almost hear the pride in her voice. “However, his codes are child’s play. Everything his police send might as well be in the clear for all it matters to me and my kids. Fearless Leader does something, the police jump to protect him, and I track it from start to finish.”

“I take it that Fearless Leader isn’t all that fearless,” Kris said dryly.

“Petrified of everyone,” Nelly said. “I really wish you could find an excuse to lase his hideout from orbit, Kris. He is everything that a government should not be.”

“But we likely can’t,” Jack said. “We don’t do things like that.”

“Darn,” Nelly said. “Sometimes being the good guy is not all it’s cracked up to be.”

“I’m very aware of that, Nelly,” Kris said. “How are the countries that aren’t in the three major zones taking the message?”

“They are still thinking about it, although anyone who can find an aunt, uncle, or grandma to visit in the country is taking this chance to use their vacation time. A lot of roads are jammed. That’s also happening in the first zone we alerted. Now that everyone knows, there’s a lot of, ah, I think you used to call it gridlock, before computers controlled traffic patterns. It’s a mess down there.”

“Hopefully, they’ll straighten it out before the bad guys arrive,” Kris said.

“Kris, there’s a movement developing among the smaller states to call for a conference in their Associated Peoples to talk to you,” Nelly said. “Are you willing to go down there?”

Kris raised an eyebrow, tossing the question to her brain trust.

Jack jumped in immediately, shaking his head. “I don’t like the idea of putting you down in the middle of that madhouse. We don’t know enough about them to know if marching in with a Marine honor guard would settle things down or start a fight, and I am so not letting you down there without the Marines.”

“No surprise there, Jack, and thank you,” Kris said, trying to make her words worth more than she knew they held. “What about the rest of you?”

There was a long pause before Jacques said, “I don’t want to get on the general’s wrong side. However, there are cultures where anyone not willing to speak face-to-face with their enemies is assumed to be lying. I’ve asked my computer to study what we know of these mad cats, and I’m afraid that I’m coming to the opinion that they are one of those cultures.”

Nelly took over the conversation at that point. “We have been examining their TV transmissions. They have some very interesting shows that I think would fit right in with what you humans call soap operas. They even sell soap and other beauty aids. That glossy coat question that got beamed up to us earlier was from one of them.”

“Nelly, is there a point in here somewhere?” Kris said.

“Yes. It may just be a product of their visual theater, but personal confrontation and reconciliation is the norm.”

“You’re basing your cultural intelligence on soap operas!” Penny said.

“It is not just their soap operas. They have movies. Historical pageants. All of them depend on this kind of eye-to-eye encounter.”

“Movies and soap operas,” Jack said with a rumbling sigh, “How can we go wrong?”

“It’s not like you humans broadcast scientific treatises on human conflict resolution on your day or night entertainment media,” Nelly said, sounding downright snappish.

“Okay, okay,” Kris said. “I have all of your input. We haven’t received an invitation to this talkathon. Let’s put this question off until then.”

Kris eyed her team. Jack was being Jack; he wanted her safe. He’d always wanted Kris Longknife safe. He didn’t seem any different now that he was arguing to keep his wife safe. Her science friends were giving her the best they had. It was a thin gruel at best. Still, she might have to base her decision on something that thin.

It was Nelly that bothered Kris. Nelly was starting to sound personally involved in the decisions she advocated. Was Kris’s computer beginning to show early signs of an ego?

Kris had been raised around big egos. Father used to grumble that he’d never met a politician who didn’t come with a bloated ego. Naturally, Father had one of the biggest Kris had ever known.

Grampa Trouble and Grampa Ray were legends. And, though Kris had missed them at first, they had the egos to go with the legend. She’d never seen the two of them go at it and hoped she never would.

But now it was Nelly. How big could a computer’s ego get? How much trouble could it cause?

Kris sighed . . . and went on to her next problem.

“Nelly, could you get the ship captains in a conference?”

“Immediately,” Nelly said, and hopped to it.

That’s it, Kris thought. Keep Nelly on specific things with specific solutions. Let’s keep the poor computer away from the value judgments where a flip of the coin is as good as anything else for conflict resolution.

In a moment, Captain Drago had joined them, and the other seven captains were watching from the wardroom’s own screen. Also watching were a lot of junior officers who were paying only partial attention to their meals as they watched the elephants go about deciding their fate.

“We have a battle to plan, as much as possible,” Kris said, without preamble. “From what we’ve seen of the aliens, they’ve adopted a line ahead, twenty-two ships long. I propose to fight them in a line ahead of seven ships. Endeavor, we’ll keep you in orbit around the planet.”

“Pardon me, ma’am, but we’d like to have a place in the fighting line, if we may,” said Captain O’dell.

She’d started life as a merchant-ship skipper, as had the Endeavor. Her ship only had six 18-inch lasers, three forward and three aft. That was intentional. Kris wanted the Endeavor to be as dangerous running as chasing.

“This is going to be a knock-down drag-out fight, Captain O’dell,” Kris said.

“I know, ma’am. Me and my crew know it will be, ma’am. But we’ve seen the inside of that damn pyramid. We’d all kind of like to get a chance to make our own statement that they ain’t gonna get our skulls for their horror house, if you know what I mean.”

“I think I do,” Kris said.

The crew thrown together for the Endeavor was a very mixed batch. Some merchant marine, some Navy, and a lot of the gun crews were Ostriches. If a crew such as that were voting for a fight, Kris had quite a team on her hands.

“Nelly, put our assumptions about the enemy up on the board.”

A line of twenty-two ships appeared on a second screen. It showed the aliens decelerating toward the cat planet. “Physics decrees that they must be braking as they come in on final approach. However, as we saw in the attack on the Hornet, they have learned to break a bit farther out and gain some tactical flexibility as they get in range. We’ll have to be prepared for that. Still, their tactical problem is governed by the laws of physics, and they can only get around them so much.”

Kris eyed Captain O’dell. “You will be in the lead position as we join the enemy in deceleration. I intend to use the moon to loop out to meet them, then fight it out with them in that final approach. Endeavor, you will be at the head of the line.”

Nelly added a name to the ship closest to the cat world. Endeavor.

“You know, ma’am, some might say we were at the end of the line.”

“In space, it’s often hard to tell,” Kris said. “But that is your position. I intend to cross their T and concentrate our fire on the head of their line.”

“That means the ship that’s at the other end of the line could be in for a heap of trouble,” Captain Taussig said in a soft drawl. “Any of their other ships that get in range will be firing away at that poor soul.”

“It does look that way,” Kris admitted.

“May I claim the honor of that position for the Hornet, Admiral?”

“Are you sure it’s an honor you’re asking?” Kris said.

“It’s where I think we’d rather be, Kris. We got a bone to pick with these bastards. They clobbered the old Hornet. I want them to know they’ve been solidly stung in this next fight.”

Kris knew that Phil came from a long line of Navy heroes, going as far back as the wet Navy. She’d always thought it was a pain in the ass to be one of those damn Longknifes. Maybe she was seeing how hard it could be to bear another proud name.

“You will have that place, Captain Taussig.”

“Thank you, Admiral. I think my great-grandfather would be very proud.”

Yep, some names were just a pain in the butt.

“Which leaves the question of who gets the honor of the next hot spot in line,” said the skipper of the Constellation, Captain Sims.

Kris nodded. “I hope none of you will think me less courageous than those who have already spoken up, but General, please retrieve my cover from my quarters. Oh, and the printout Nelly’s making.”

WHAT PRINTOUT AM I MAKING?

ONE WITH ALL THE NAMES OF THE OTHER SIX SHIPS, WELL SPACED OUT SO WE CAN CUT THEM INTO SLIPS OF PAPER AND DRAW THEM FROM THE HAT.

COVER, Nelly corrected.

WHATEVER.

Jack returned with her cover, complete with admiral’s scrambled eggs. Nelly and Abby had had a ball constructing just the right gold braid for the bill of her hat.

Captain Drago produced a pair of old-fashioned scissors from some drawer in the wardroom.

Scissors. What delightful old tech.

“I’ll have the lovely Amanda Kutter serve as our honest broker here. This sheet has the names of the other six ships of the squadron. Each of them capable of fighting just as well as the next and holding any place in our line.”

“Yes the paper does,” Amanda said, holding it up for all to see.

Kris handed her the scissors. “Cut the flimsy up and fold them over. Then put them in my cover.”

She did.

Kris stood and went to stand behind Amanda. She held the cover above the economist’s head. “Now draw out the name of the ship that will fight right behind Hornet.

“Constellation,” Amanda said as she opened the first slip and laid it on the table in front of her.

Captain Sims grinned proudly from his place on the screen.

“Royal,” Amanda read next.

Another skipper seemed just as glad.

“Wasp.”

Captain Drago’s grin was full of pride.

“Congress,” was followed by Intrepid. Bulwark would fight next to Endeavor.

“That, my good captains, is our fighting order. Captain Drago, please arrange for the ships to take their station in our new line.”

“And may God help us all,” Captain Drago was heard to mutter.