Tenacious

55

“We’ve been pinged! Radar!”

Bridge personnel are supposed to be very informative, but circumspect, in their reports. They are never supposed to shout their reports. Sad to say, old Chief Beni failed to follow proper decorum at that moment.

He was definitely shouting.

“There’s also communication from the station to the warship wrecks!”

There was no need to order battle stations. Everyone was already there. The Wasp even had an admiral at the Weapons station. There was also no need to order a flip of the ship. The frigate was on a nose-forward course, anyway.

NELLY, JINK.

I’M DOING IT, KRIS, BUT WE’VE ONLY GOT THRUSTERS TO PLAY WITH. THERE’S NOT MUCH I CAN DO.

Nevertheless, in her high-gee egg, Kris felt the side movement as Nelly slid to the left, then dropped the ship down.

On her board, Kris held the lasers ready, but she had no target.

Nothing moved.

Captain Drago had arranged his approach so that only one of the warships was over the horizon of the alien station. Kris searched it for a target.

“Enemy lasers are powering up and coming to bear,” Nelly reported.

“Kill them,” Kris ordered.

Laser 1 on the Wasp’s bow shot out a stuttering blast of light. On the hulk, a section of hull exploded.

But there was more movement visible on the dinged, seared, and dented hull. Faster than human thought, Nelly popped one, then another, then four. Finally, she used all seven lasers.

A missile tried to launch from the dead ship. Nelly nailed it before it cleared its launcher. The explosion wrecked several other launchers.

Kris was fighting a zombie. It shambled and shook and tried to kill her with every twitch. The Wasp fought back with the clear, intelligent intent of every human and computer aboard her who loved life and intended to keep living.

Almost as suddenly as it had started, it was over. In what seemed like an eternity but couldn’t have been more than a blink, the dead ship was truly dead.

The bridge crew took a second to recover their breath.

“What do we do with the other ship?” Captain Drago asked.

“I’d love to send a couple of antimatter missiles its way,” Kris said, still working on catching her breath, “but we only have a limited supply of them. Order the Royal to scrounge up some rocks and send them at it fast.”

“I’ve sent the order,” Nelly reported.

“And what do you want to do with that spark of life we see on the station?” Jack asked from his egg parked beside Kris’s.

“Mount up your Marines and see what you find,” Kris said. “If there’s anyone over there alive, I want a word with them. Clearly, they need to understand what a white flag means.”

“Kris, I didn’t notice any white flag,” Jack said. Kris could almost see the grimace on his face. “They set a trap, and we tripped it. It wasn’t a very good trap, and we tripped it with our usual Longknife sledgehammer, but . . .” He left the conclusion to Kris.

“Yeah,” she said with a sigh, “I’ve got to quit expecting these folks to be decent and open to negotiations. Foolish of me to even think so.”

“I’ll mount up both Marine companies,” Jack said. “Captain Drago, can we borrow the Wasp’s pinnace?”

“Take all the longboats, too. Better you see what lies over there than me.”

It would prove regrettable that anyone had to see it.