Defender

36

They had already left a buoy at the jump into the system where the battle took place. Now they headed for the desperate jump they’d taken out of the system. They passed close to the still-tumbling wreck of the alien mother ship.

A thorough scan showed no new changes in the wreck. Maybe they’d scared the bastards off. Kris could only hope.

They dropped off a buoy on the other side of the jump. The vacuum there still glowed from the wreckage of so many alien ships and the little bit that was the Fearless. They followed the same course and acceleration to the next jump. At this speed, they could not leave a buoy. It would have to be covered by another ship.

They made the same long jump they had last time. This system had seen no fight, so they sped on, picking up speed, but at a slower acceleration. The old Wasp’s engines had started to show wear from heavy use.

The next jump brought them to the system where the limping Intrepid had fought its last fight, struggling to buy time for the Wasp and Hornet to make their escape. Once again, the scientific measurements showed a much more crowded and warmer vacuum.

The Intrepid had died hard.

This time, the new Wasp headed for the closest conventional jump. The Hornet had taken that one, letting the old Wasp slip away through the new fuzzy jump before the aliens had a chance to take notice. They had to guess a bit. The Hornet probably also had to slow down its acceleration. Still, they put on forty revolutions a minute and crossed their fingers.

The jump took them close, Captain Drago’s low whistle said way too close, to a gas giant.

“There’s a lot of vaporized ship out there,” the sensor team reported. “Can’t tell how much at this point, but there was a fight here.”

“Nelly, could Commander Taussig have done a loop around the gas giant and come back at the aliens following him?”

“I’ll have to back the system up a few months. It’s impossible to say where this jump was then. They do wander. However, it does look like he could have used several of the moons as well as the gas giant itself to help him break. It might have added some fuel to his tanks as he did it. It would have been a lot harder on the Hornet than any of the cloud dancing we did.”

“But his ship didn’t have all the containers the old Wasp had,” Captain Drago pointed out. “It would be easier for him than for us.”

“Is there any ship in this system?” Kris asked Senior Chief Beni, ret.

“I show no active reactors. No squawkers are talking to me.”

Kris let that walk around in her gut for a second. She didn’t like it, but it might be what she would have to take home with her. Two of her corvettes had fought the aliens, and both had died. If a fight had taken place here, the odds were that it had cost the Hornet’s crew all they had. Jack maneuvered his egg over to hers, once more at Weapons on the Wasp, and rested a supporting hand on her shoulder.

She gave his hand a squeeze.

“If I were stuck out here in this corner of the universe, I’d choke my squawker,” Jack said. “Is there any way to interrogate a squawker that’s been turned off?”

“Our Identification, Friend or Foe has three levels,” Captain Drago said. “On, off, and passive. What were the codes we were using on the old Wasp?”

Senior Chief Beni needed a moment for his computer to call up the old code and send it. The interrogatory went out at the speed of light as they broke at two gees toward the gas giant. Minutes went by. Ten. Twenty. Thirty.

“Are there any planets in the Goldilocks’ zone?” Kris asked, trying to fill time as the clock went longer and longer.

“There are three,” the chief reported. “One a bit close to the star. The other’s a bit far out. There’s one about in the middle, but it’s on the other side of the sun at the moment.”

“So it might need a long time to reply to our message,” Jack said.

“Yes,” the chief answered. “Hours. A day.”

The time passed slowly as the Wasp decelerated, aiming to graze past one moon, then another as she swung around the gas giant. Time for a reply from the closer planets came and went.

“I’ve got something,” the chief didn’t quite shout, waking Kris as she dozed in her egg.

“What?” Kris demanded.

“It sounds like the reply code,” Chief Beni said. “It’s weak and a bit garbled, but it’s got four of the right alphas and numbers.”

“Captain Drago, will you please set a course for the other side of this sun?”

“Happily, Your Highness. Very happily.”

With a sigh of relief and hope, they set a long, slowing course for a responder that had hardly responded at all.