Daring

27

For a moment, Kris heard the words, but her brain refused to make sense of them. That state of affairs lasted for maybe two seconds. Then Kris jumped to her feet and pitched her voice to carry.

“People, I need this room. Please take your drinks and go elsewhere. Barkeep, this pub is closed.”

The folks on the Wasp were used to strange demands coming from their princess. With hardly a word, the place emptied.

“Nelly, tell my staff to get down here on the double.”

“They’re already running,” her computer reported. “ All except the chief. I figured you’d want to let him keep working with Vicky’s people.”

“Good call, Nelly. Yes.”

“Should I return to my quarters?” the Iteeche asked.

“Ron, you’re the reason we’re here. I don’t see why you should get this report secondhand. Vicky, same goes for you.”

“I wish I’d brought Maggie with me,” Vicky said. “Would you mind if I sent the admiral’s barge back to the Fury and picked her up?”

“Assuming your admiral doesn’t confiscate his barge, do what you want,” Kris snapped, totally in combat mode. She thought for a second. “Nelly, you want to give all the admirals a heads-up? They can join us online if they want to.”

“Aye, aye, Commodore,” Nelly said. “I’ll make it so. I like that phrase.”

Jack arrived at a full run, with Penny and the colonel on his heels. Abby, Kris’s maid and spy, shuffled in a few seconds later, her hair up in curlers and wearing a housecoat and fuzzy slippers.

“This better be good,” she complained.

“Phil is back. The Hornet caught a glimpse of the bug-eyed monsters,” Kris said.

“How much of him did they catch?” the colonel asked darkly.

“I got a one-line brief,” Kris said. “I’ve only had time to sound officer call.”

“Should you sound ‘Boots and Saddles’?” Jack asked. “Now might not be a bad time to beat all hands to battle stations.”

“Phil didn’t holler for it, but, yeah, there’s no telling if he knows what’s on his tail or not. Nelly, order PatRon 10 to battle stations. Tell the admirals that we are going to high alert, and I would advise them to all do the same.”

The Klaxon on the Wasp went off. “Battle stations. Battle stations. All hands to battle stations. This is no drill,” blared from the public address.

“Kris, Captain Drago for you,” Nelly reported.

Oops, Kris thought. “Put him on.”

“Would you mind telling me why you’ve ordered battle stations for our ship. I may or may not be complaining, but when the captain’s the last to know about something like this, it bothers me.”

“The Hornet just returned. Commander Taussig reports that they have seen the bug-eyed monsters, and they are huge. Until I know what all that means, we are at battle stations.”

“A very good idea, Your Highness. Thank you,” said the captain, and rung off.

Once again, the convoluted chain of command on the Wasp had gotten tangled and survived the experience. With any luck, and the goodwill of all involved, it would continue that way.

Kris eyed the screen, waiting for everyone to appear on it for the upcoming conference. It still showed the Mercury accelerating toward the jump point for home. Its report was still valid. However, it was now a touch out of date.

“Nelly, recall the Mercury. I think we’ll need to add to her report.”

“Aye, aye, Kris, I’ve ordered the Mercury to return to the fleet area.”

“Kris, I don’t mean to juggle your elbow,” Jack said, “but if we might have bug-eyed monsters charging though the jump point after the Hornet any second, wouldn’t it be a good idea to have some report headed for home right now.”

Kris scowled at the screen. “Order, counterorder, disorder,” she muttered.

“But there’s an exception to every rule,” the colonel whispered.

“Nelly, ask the skipper of the Mercury how long until they take the jump.”

“She says eight hours at their previous acceleration. She’s just about to start decelerating to return to the fleet.”

“Tell her to maintain her course for the jump, but stay alert. Keep an eye out for fighting in the anchorage and record all message traffic. We may have an additional report for her.”

“Aye, aye, Commodore,” the computer said. A moment later, she added, “The Mercury is back to accelerating for the jump.”

The screen flickered and changed to show three admirals and Lieutenant Commander Taussig. Admiral Krätz was already talking. Maybe bellowing was more accurate.

“By what authority have you ordered my ships to battle stations?” he demanded.

“I ordered PatRon 10 to battle stations. I suggested you might want to follow our lead,” Kris said. “The Hornet is back, and Commander Taussig reports contact with the bug-eyed monsters.”

“You have found them,” Admiral Kōta said. “Did they follow you?”

“I think I gave them the slip,” Phil answered. “At least I didn’t see anything of my pursuers in the last two systems I crossed.”

“But whether or not you shook them depends on their tracking skills,” Admiral Channing pointed out.

“There is that problem,” the skipper of the Hornet admitted.

“You want to tell us about the bug-eyed monsters?” Kris said.

“Not really,” Phil answered with a sigh. “Truth be told, I didn’t spend any more time observing them than I had to.”

“Fill us in, Commander,” Kris ordered.

“We’d done our five jumps out and had nothing to show for it. We started back, following the new route the boffins said would bring us home. The second jump, three jumps out from here, we got a surprise.”

He took a deep breath before going on. “We came through the jump and headed for the next one. It was only three hours away. Thank God. Because our Sensor board started lighting up like it was Christmas. Reactors, thousands of them, all well down in the system, and headed for a different jump.”

“Thousands of reactors?” Kris said.

“I’ll pass along our data. Maybe your boffins can make sense of it. There must have been three or four thousand reactors humming away at full power. There were even more trickling at minimum power. We finally located the source and got a fairly decent picture of it.”

The screen opened a separate window. It filled with something that looked like an elongated egg. An egg with a very bumpy skin.

“How big is that mother?” Admiral Krätz asked.

“We estimate it at over four thousand kilometers along its longitudinal axis. Not quite two thousand klicks at its widest. It’s hard to tell because we don’t know what is the main body and what are the ships docked to it.”

“Those knobby things come off?” Kris asked.

“Three of them took off after us.”

The pictures shifted to show three elongated dots detaching themselves from the main egg and making a straight line for the Hornet.

“How long did it take them to react to you?” the colonel asked.

“About an hour. Less, if you make allowances for the speed-of-light delay for them to spot us.”

“Did they try to communicate with you?” Kris asked.

“There was a lot of activity on the radio frequencies, but none was aimed at us, and we didn’t identify anything as an effort to raise us. Once it was clear the ships were headed our way with a bone in their teeth, we did make an effort to open communications with them. If there was a reply, we couldn’t identify it in the clutter.”

“You said a bone in their teeth,” Kris said. “How hot was their pursuit?”

“Three gees. I jacked the Hornet up to 3.5 gees and got out of there just as fast as I could.”

“Did you see any evidence of them in your next system?” Kris asked.

“Kris, when I got into the next system, I was very tempted to point the Hornet at the closest jump and see where it led me.” He swallowed hard at the thought. Only time would tell if it would have been better for the Hornet to disappear like the lost Flying Dutchman rather than come home with her report.

That decision might yet have to be made.

“Instead, I kept the boat at 3.5 gees and headed for the second jump like I was supposed to. We jumped out of there before we spotted any activity at the last jump point.”

He took a deep breath. “I don’t know if they didn’t pursue us or what. What I do know is that we didn’t see hide nor hair of them in any of the systems we crossed to get here.”

“We’ve got to leave immediately,” Admiral Krätz snapped.

“I’ve still got a ship out there,” Kris said. From her point of view, there was now even more reason not to leave the Intrepid out here alone.

“We need to get this information back to our governments,” Admiral Channing said.

“Nelly, has the Mercury been taping this report?”

“Yes, Your Highness. She has been recording this and adding it to the report you filed with her.”

“Good,” Kris said. That took care of home as much as she could. She wasn’t finished with Phil. “Commander, tell me more about this huge base ship. Did you get anything more on it?”

“It’s dense. More dense than either of Wardhaven’s moons. Much more dense than old Earth’s moon. Almost as dense as, say, a planet.”

“And they needed thousands of reactors to power it.”

“Power it and propel it. It was leaving a plasma stream behind it that had to be seen to be believed.”

“How fast?” Kris asked.

“It was doing about half a gee acceleration away from one jump point and headed for another.”

“So it was going somewhere,” Kris said.

“Definitely.”

“Space rovers,” Penny said.

“But we don’t have a picture of who or what is at the helm of this ship. Ships,” Kris corrected herself.

“Nothing, Commander. I’ve got recordings of what they were transmitting, but no one aboard the Hornet could make any sense of them.”

“Pass them to us,” Kris ordered. “Nelly, tell Professor mFumbo that he doesn’t have any higher priority than extracting something useful from this data stream. I very much want to watch any video they have. Very much.”

“Kris, we’re getting the Hornet’s take,” Nelly reported. “The boffins are already working on it. I’ve got my kids on it as well.”

“All of them?” Kris said. “Even Dada?”

“Yes, Kris. And Cara knows about our situation. She’s been peeking through the front door of the Forward Lounge for the last ten minutes.”

Sure enough, the two swinging doors into the lounge were showing a crack. Cara was lying on her belly, furtively watching them.

“We have to get that child a battle station.” Kris sighed.

“Really!” Cara said, jumping to her feet.

“In the scullery,” the colonel grumbled.

“I can do more than that,” Cara insisted.

Kris stared at the overhead; to the best of her knowledge, there were no standard operating procedures for getting into a war with space aliens. The Navy had a standard answer to almost everything else imaginable, but not this.

A hasty review of her actions did not make her proud. She’d bobbled her start out of the gate. She should have thought to go to General Quarters immediately, and not needed Jack to remind her. The order and counterorder to the Mercury were more of an embarrassment than a mistake. Still, what she’d done since felt right.

“Okay, folks, let’s get organized. Phil, bring the Hornet down to join the fleet. Hermes, come alongside the Wasp and take aboard our gizmo for peeking into the next system. No, hold it. That won’t work,” Kris caught herself. “The Hornet was doing fifty thousand klicks per hour, and the periscope only shows you what’s in the closest system.

“Hermes, get the coordinates from Commander Taussig and jack yourself up to maximum gees and duck back into his last system. I’d like a report on whether anything is behind him.”

“Do you think that’s smart?” Admiral Krätz asked.

“We can either sit here wondering if hostiles are going to come charging through that jump point or we can go look,” Kris snapped.

“Or we can get up speed and get out of here ourselves,” the Greenfeld officer suggested.

Kris did a quick and silent survey of the people whose opinion she valued. None of them looked interested in hiding under the bed.

“As I’ve said many times before, Admiral, you are free to do what you wish with your battle squadron. I reserve the right to do with PatRon 10 what I choose. Nelly, see that Hermes gets under way for a fast run into Hornet’s last system of call and return.”

“Could you at least see that the Hermes’s computers are rigged for destruction,” Admiral Channing said. “I would suggest that we all prepare our navigational systems to assure that if we fall in battle. our enemy will be unable to extract navigational information from our wreckage. That ship that attacked the Wasp certainly made sure that we could draw nothing from its databases.”

“That sounds defeatist,” was Admiral Krätz’s observation.

“It’s only defeatist until somebody defeats us. Then it sounds pretty smart,” Admiral Kōta said. “I’ll have my division heads draw up a list of what should be rigged for complete destruction. We’ll also put it on a fail-safe to make sure we don’t have any accidents.”

“I’ll also have the remaining two courier ships see that all reaction tanks are topped off,” Kris said. “We may need to run for it in a hurry.”

KRIS, SHOULD WE TELL THE OTHER ADMIRALS WHAT WE KNOW ABOUT THE FUZZY JUMPS? IF WE HAVE TO LEAD THEM INTO ONE OF THEM TO GET AWAY FROM THE ALIENS, IT MIGHT HELP IF THEY KNEW WHAT WE WERE DOING BEFOREHAND.

THAT COULD WELL BE A SMART MOVE, NELLY, BUT IT ALSO MEANS GIVING AWAY SOMETHING I’M NOT SURE I WANT TO GIVE. I’D RATHER KEEP THAT ACE UP MY SLEEVE FOR A WHILE LONGER.

WE MAY NEED THOSE FUZZY JUMPS, KRIS, TO GET OUT OF A BIG MESS.

NELLY, WE DON’T KNOW IF THE ALIENS ALREADY KNOW ABOUT THE FUZZY JUMPS. AND IF THEY DON’T, I DON’T WANT TO LET THEM SEE US VANISH INTO SPACE THAT HOLDS NO SUCH OPTION TO THEM.

I FEAR THAT WE WILL HAVE SOME REALLY TOUGH DECISIONS AHEAD OF US, KRIS.

TRUST ME, NELLY, I KNOW THAT WE DO.

Jack cleared his throat. “Could I ask you, Commander, to rethink one of your recent orders?

“Jack, you’re going all formal on me,” Kris said.

He shook his head. “I don’t think we should send the Hermes out.”

“I’m afraid that I agree with your Marine,” Colonel Cortez said.

“Both of you don’t think we need to know what’s coming this way?” Kris said.

“We need to be able to kill anything that jumps through after the Hornet,” Jack said, “but no, Kris, I don’t think we need to leave a bigger trail pointing at that jump point.”

“It would be nice to know if something is following him,” Kris said.

“Certainly,” the colonel agreed. “Is there any chance that your boffins might be able to get their jump-point periscope working so we could peek through?”

“Nelly, get Professor mFumbo,” Kris said.

“I’m busy,” he snapped a second later. “There are several approaches that might crack these images, but right now, none of them have worked.”

“Quick question, Professor,” Kris said. “So far the jump-point periscope has only succeeded in showing us the closest other side of the jump point. Any chance we could dial it around to show us some of the other systems connecting through the jump point?”

“Like the seven-hundred-light-year-away system that the Hornet just left?”

“Exactly, Professor.”

“Sorry. Not a chance. Our grasp on what we’re doing is very tenuous, Your Highness. I see why you would want some selection in your view, but we can’t offer it at this time. I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to give you that.”

“Thank you, Professor. You can get back to your other assignment.”

The link clicked dead.

“Okay, if we can’t do that, could we bushwhack them as they enter our system at speed?” Jack asked.

“Like we think they have been doing our scout ships,” Ron said.

The admirals were still on-screen, but all had turned away to consult with their staffs.

“Admiral Krätz, you said that during the last war no one ever thought of stationing ships at the jump point and shooting up anything that came out.”

The Greenfeld officer turned away from his officers to face Kris. “Yes. You could never tell when a jump point might take it into its head to zig or zag. Far too dangerous for the ship. And much too exhausting to the crew of the ship to be floating in microgee for weeks at a time. The health of the crew requires that we tie up to a station for some gravity at regular intervals. That’s also why we usually accelerate at one gee, young lady.”

“Admiral, I believe that the 18-inch lasers on your battleships now have triple the range of the guns we used back then. So you don’t have to get real close to the jump point to clobber anything coming out of it. Your battle squadron is also not tied up to a space station pier just now, but . . .” Kris said, and waited for a light to dawn.

The admiral said several phrases in a language Kris didn’t understand.

YOU WANT ME TO TRANSLATE, KRIS?

NO, NELLY. I SUSPECT I HAVE A PRETTY GOOD IDEA WHAT HE’S SAYING.

The admiral fell quiet, fixing Kris with a scowl. “ And I imagine that you want me to take my battle squadron over to that jump point and take station to engage anything that exits it.”

“It strikes me as a brilliant use of your invention.”

“I would rather evacuate this system.”

“I am not ready to leave.”

“Young woman, you have no respect for rank, or your elders.”

“I’m sorry you feel that way, sir, but I must represent the interests of the United Society as it is given me to see them. I have a ship not yet in from what is turning out to be a very hostile neighborhood of the galaxy. You are free to leave, sir. However, if you choose to stay, may I suggest that you take your four battleships over to where you may apply your 18-inch lasers to anything that exits Jump Point Delta.”

“That will take me farther away from the exit jump, Longknife.”

“For God’s sakes, Georg,” Admiral Channing snapped. “If you don’t want to do what needs doing, Kōta and I will take our ships over there. Though, Lord knows, you’ve got the biggest guns in the fleet.”

“I go. I go. Captain, send to BatRon 12, to keep the little Longknife girl happy, we will set up a prepared defense thirty thousand kilometers from Jump Point Dora. There. Are you happy?”

“Thank you very much,” Kris said, taking care to keep her tone as sincere as the law allowed.

Kris leaned back in her seat and thought seriously about ordering a drink. Clearly, it had been one of those days. She sighed and fought down the temptation, consoling herself with the thought that it couldn’t get any worse than this.

“Ah, Kris.”

“Yes, Nelly.”

“The Intrepid just jumped in system. He says you really want to hear what he has to say.

Kris groaned, and just managed to avoid giving voice to something that would not have been very princesslike.

“Put him on. Admirals, you might want to hear this.”