Daring

57

Kris had a million questions, none of which could be answered at the moment. She left it to Nelly and her brood to bring the balloot alongside. Nelly was good, she almost plugged the balloot’s off-loading pipe right into the Wasp’s transfer station to the reaction tanks.

Once the sailors had the balloot tied down, Kris quickly brought Launch 1 around to catch the hook into the drop bay.

She felt rather insensitive handing Maria off to the first sailor who glided onto the launch, but the petty officer was headed for sick bay, and Kris wanted to be on the bridge, if not immediately, then ten minutes ago.

“What have we got?” she demanded as she shot onto the bridge and caught a handhold on her Weapons station.

“We don’t know,” Captain Drago said. “Where’s the chief?”

“Down there somewhere. We hit something like a jet stream sideways, and it ripped us up good. Two of us held on, so you have reaction mass. We haven’t heard from Launch 3. It had the chief, the colonel, and your scrounger.”

“That’s not good,” the skipper said. “Nelly, can you make anything of what sensor feed we got? We’re not using any net we can avoid. Plug yourself directly into the Sensor station if you don’t mind.”

Kris shoved off from Weapons and grabbed a handhold on Sensors. Nelly had a wire into the station a second later. Quickly, it replayed a ship entering the system.

It didn’t look like anything Kris had ever seen.

“It doesn’t match anything in All the Worlds’ Fighting Ships,” Nelly quickly answered. “The engines and power plant don’t match anything our intelligence says the Iteeche have. They also aren’t much like the aliens that have tried to shoot us up. However, if anything, they are closer to those aliens than anything human or Iteeche.”

“But not a match,” the skipper said.

“They match nothing I know of,” Nelly said. “I take it you don’t want me to use any active sensors?”

“Don’t you even think of doing that. We’re a hole in space. They’re decelerating and can’t likely get a good read of what’s behind their plasma jets. They don’t know we’re here, and I like it that way.”

“What’s on your mind?” Kris asked.

Captain Drago rubbed his chin. “We could just sit here, quiet-like, and let them pass us by. Or we could come charging out gunning for them, assuming there’s a chance of us getting a shot at them and surviving the fight. I haven’t thought of a third option.”

Kris mulled those options over for a second. The first one sure looked good.

“What was the ship’s speed when it came through the jump point?” she found herself asking.

“Hard to say for sure on passive sensors,” Sulwan answered, “but looks like it was doing some sixty-five thousand klicks an hour. She’s decelerating at about 1.5 gees.”

Without Kris’s asking, Nelly opened a small window on the forward screen. It showed the present system as a tiny dot against a large star chart. Iteeche space was marked in yellow. Then a large red circle appeared.

Its diameter was well beyond Iteeche space.

“Nelly, add in the three systems that have been eating Iteeche scouts.”

Nelly did. The three flashing red systems were all inside the circle.

“So they made a big jump from outside Iteeche space,” Kris said. “They’re slowing down in this system, and will, I’ll bet, use it to make a series of small jumps to check out the neighborhood. Just like I had PatRon 10 do.”

“It certainly looks that way,” the skipper agreed.

“Nelly, where will the two old-fashioned jump points in the system take this bogey if she tries them nice and slow?”

Nelly showed two systems within twenty light-years. “Neither one is occupied,” she reported.

“And from those systems?” Kris asked, really, really wishing she could keep her mouth shut and do something stupid for a change. Hadn’t her friends paid enough for the Longknife legend this trip?

More systems lit up. “Several of them have large Iteeche colonies,” Nelly said.

THIS IS FROM THE MAP I DON’T HAVE, KRIS.

No one on the bridge asked for clarification. If Nelly said it, it had to be true.

In all her life, Kris had never more wanted not to say something, but words tumbled slowly out of her mouth. “So what we have here is an alien scout ship. She did a big jump to a base system, and now she’s likely going to nose around. And if she does, she’ll find a large chunk of the Iteeche Empire.”

Kris paused, then went on. “Question for the class. If she does get back, how long before a mother ship like the last one we just saw follows? But if she doesn’t get back, will they just write her off, or will they immediately send another scout?”

“There’s no way for us to answer any of your questions, Your Highness,” Captain Drago said. “So, Commodore, what are your orders?”

Once more, it came down to what could a Longknife pull out of her hat. Kris suppressed a sigh. Her hat was empty. Her pot of gold was drained. Everything she had or ever had been had been poured out in the last few weeks.

Wasn’t there anyone else to take responsibility for this mess?

“Sulwan, if I did want to take a potshot at that alien, how could I do it?”

The navigator had been working with her board at a furious rate since Kris came on the bridge. Now she looked up, seemed startled by the use of her name, and blinked groggily at Kris.

“I figured someone would be asking for my opinion,” she said. “Our 24-inch pulse lasers are good for forty thousand klicks. Our 5-inch long guns can reach out maybe a bit longer, but I have this wild suspicion that they wouldn’t do much damage to anything bigger than a torpedo. Anyway, the direct course from Jump Point Alpha to Jump Point Beta won’t put that ship anywhere close to within range.”

Kris liked what she was hearing, but her mouth had a mind of its own. “What kind of activity could put us within range?”

“I knew you’d ask, and it all depends.”

“You want to explain that?” her captain asked.

“Not really. Did any of that silly metal you used to hold on to the balloot come back with you?”

“We did not lose that much,” Nelly put in. “You had lost a lot in the fight, but there’s still about half of what you started with.”

“Well, then I guess we can try making like a rock again,” Sulwan said. “Two orbits from now, if we were to make a hard, 3.5-gee burn, while we’re behind this noisy ice giant, we could go from a nice round orbit, if I do say so myself, into a rough slingshot course that would put us headed out in the general direction of the alien.”

Sulwan paused for a breath. “If they are real dumb, and don’t notice that no asteroid flew into a pass at this ice giant, but just take for granted that one came out the other side, they might let us drift up close to them. We’d have to stay real, real quiet, and we’d have to use the armor for a disguise, but we could close to thirty-eight thousand klicks of them.”

The navigator sighed, a long-winded one that would make any Irish mom proud.

Captain Drago frowned at his navigator’s work, then eyed Kris. “It might work. Now, one question for you, Princess. Are you going to try to open communications with them before you shoot them in the back? Because if you do, and they shoot on sight like they did the Fury, all this ain’t going to be worth a bucket of warm spit.”

“You have a good point,” Kris said. “I’ll have to think about that.”

Then it was her turn to ask a question. “Captain, Sulwan’s course calls for us to break out in two orbits. Have you heard or seen anything from Launch 3?”

“Nothing,” the skipper said. “And Chief Beni of all people will know that we can’t afford for them to talk to us.”

“Yes,” Kris said. “I’ll be in my cabin if you need me.”

“I’ll try not to need you, Commodore,” Captain Drago said.