Tenacious

32

The Wasp led the rest of the squadron through the Alpha Jump and into the Alwa System. As soon as all the ships were through, they flipped ship and began applying a full 3.5-gee deceleration burn.

From her day quarters, Kris began making her report to Alwa. “We are back, and our investigation was very fruitful. We found the alien home world and have even recruited twenty of them. Since the home world has returned to the Stone Age, I’m not sure what we’ve recruited them for, but for better or worse, we have some aliens aboard and talking, such as they can.”

Kris paused to collect her thoughts. She knew it would take quite a while for this message to reach Alwa, and just as long for any response to get by.

“Kris, I think we have a problem,” Nelly said.

“What kind of problem?”

“There is no message traffic directed at us, but there is a lot of traffic going out from Canopus Station. I think someone has hijacked a freighter.”

“What?” didn’t say much, but it was all Kris could get out.

“A freighter is making for the Beta Jump. It was supposed to stop at an asteroid mine, but instead of flipping ship and decelerating, it took off at 1.25 gee for the jump.”

“Nelly, get my team up here,” Kris said as she guided her egg onto the bridge.

“Captain Drago, we may need to keep all our velocity. Please send to squadron, ‘On my mark we will kill the deceleration burn, please acknowledge.’”

“We have acknowledgments from all the squadron,” the comm immediately reported.

“Mark,” Kris said. And the Wasp went zero gee.

“The squadron is still in formation,” the navigator reported. “No problems reported.”

“Very good,” Captain Drago said as he rolled his egg off his bridge and into the admiral’s bridge.

Once in, he paused. “Now, Your Highness, would you mind telling this poor working stiff what the hell is going on here?”

“It appears that someone hijacked a freighter and is making for the Beta Jump,” Kris said.

“Christ on a crutch,” Drago said. “Who would do that?”

“Apparently,” Nelly provided, “Commander Sampson managed to pull it off.”

“You should have hung that bad apple when you had the chance,” Drago said.

“I may have definitely failed that leadership challenge,” Kris admitted. “Nelly, get my battle staff in here, if you please.”

“Yes, Admiral.”

Moments later, Kris had her key fighters assembled. Jack arrived with Amanda and Jacques. Penny rolled in right behind them with Masao.

Kris quickly filled them all in.

“Nelly, are you sure?” Captain Drago asked.

“None of this traffic is aimed at us,” Nelly said, “and we did arrive in the middle of it. However, I am now 99.9 percent sure that I understand it correctly. Commander Sampson managed to get aboard a freighter headed for an asteroid mine.”

“She’s risking long space jumps with a single reactor,” Captain Drago growled. “She’s a bigger fool than I thought. The greater fools are those who went with her.”

“That turns out not to be the case,” Nelly said. “The mine had a very productive two weeks and had an extralarge load of ore for Smart Metal production. Someone assigned one of the empty supply ships, still with its two reactors, so it could get the entire load in one lift and do it fast.”

“When luck goes bad, it just doesn’t quit,” Jack muttered.

“Sampson took off with the freighter for the asteroid belt at 1.25 gees and it wasn’t until the Sisu failed to flip and begin a deceleration burn that anyone was the wiser. She’s now headed for the jump and will hit there going at close to four hundred thousand kilometers an hour.”

“That will be a long jump,” Kris said.

“At least seven hundred light-years, maybe more, if she puts revolutions on the ship and gooses its acceleration up just before the jump,” Nelly said. “Kris, Sampson didn’t make any jumps like that on her way out here on the Constellation, what with Canopus Station and the factories tagging along.”

“No, but if she’s done any reading about the way we jumped around on the way back to human space after the first battle, she’ll know something about it,” Kris said.

“Will the people with her be prepared for high gees?” Penny asked.

“How hard is it to make an egg?” Kris asked.

“It’s easy,” Nelly said. “If you have the software.”

“What’s the rest of the fleet doing about this renegade?” Jack asked.

“No warships are out in that sector of the system. No ships are expected through the jump point, so there is not much chance of an easy intercept.”

“Trying to intercept a ship coming at you at four hundred thousand klicks is not something I’d want to do,” Drago admitted.

“The fleet is basically tied up at the pier on Canopus Station, doing fix and mend from a practice exercise they finished yesterday,” Nelly reported. “They are refueling as fast as they can, but it will be a long and slow stern chase for them.”

Kris stared at the overhead for a moment, then made her call. “Captain Drago, what is the squadron’s fuel state?”

“We’re around eighty percent, plus or minus a few points, Admiral.”

“It appears to me that we are in the best position for a stern chase. Do you foresee a problem?”

“None at the moment, Admiral.”

“Then send to squadron. ‘Set course for Jump Point Beta. On my mark, you will begin a 3.5-gee acceleration.’”

“The message is sent,” Drago reported. “We have acknowledgments.”

“Mark,” Kris said.

In her day quarters, dust motes that had been floating in zero gee began a dive for the deck.

“Captain, set a course and speed that will get us to Jump Point Beta with a velocity of four hundred thousand klicks on the squadron. Be prepared to adjust that speed based upon our observations of the renegade’s speed as it enters the jump.”

“Aye, aye, Admiral. Nelly, if you will work with my navigator, I would appreciate the effort.”

“Most certainly, Captain,” Nelly said most primly, then added, “Captain, Admiral, I foresee a small but not insignificant probability of a collision at extremely high speed with an asteroid or ship if we follow a course direct from here to Jump Point Beta. May I recommend that we adjust our course to take us outside the plane of the Alwa System. It will add time, but be safer.”

Kris raised an eyebrow to Captain Drago. He nodded. “Nelly, send to the squadron, ‘Conform to flag’s movement,’ then adjust our course up or down.”

“I believe down would be the safest course.”

“Tell my navigator to do that,” Captain Drago said.

“Is there anything else I’m missing?” Kris asked her crew.

“Someone will have to inform the aliens,” Jacques said. “I visited with them for a bit yesterday, checking on some language issues. They find the eggs confining and want to know when they can get out of them. I told them soon.”

“Then I will have to tell them later,” Kris said, “but not now.”

She paused to compose her thoughts. “Nelly, send to Admiral Kitano. ‘We are in the system in a high-energy state. We will take over pursuit of the hijacked freighter. Please clear the area around Jump Point Beta for our use. Be advised that more reports on the investigation of the alien home world are to follow. Please pass along to me any report on your present situation. Longknife sends.’”

“That ought to cause quite a stir,” Jack said.

“We’ll see,” Kris said. “Nelly, have you and your kids sifted through all the reports we have? Select out the most complete and informative. Send all their executive summaries first, with the rest to follow. See how much we can get out before we go through Beta Jump.”

“Working on it, Kris. I assume this is a second priority to navigation?”

“Correct, Nelly. Catching Sampson is our number one priority.”

“We can handle it all, Kris,” Nelly said, and if she’d had them, she would have been busting her buttons.

There was a long wait before the first message came in from Canopus Station, and it was a visual of Admiral Kitano.

“Oh my God, you folks are coming in fast! We have a problem,” and she proceeded to fill Kris in on the problem she already knew about. Kitano was about halfway through the explanation when a lieutenant brought her a message flimsy. She glanced at it and laughed.

“So, you’ve already picked up on what I’m telling you and, as I should have known, are reacting to it. Okay, you have the right of way. We will keep the space around Jump Point Beta clear for you. Good luck and Godspeed or more.”

The admiral paused to take a deep breath. “Viceroy, I’m glad you had good luck at the alien home world, but we’ve had the worst luck here. Some of the old Rooster elders have taken to civil disobedience. They wander into roads, purely by accident, they insist, but our trucks don’t dare do more than fifteen or twenty klicks for fear of running someone down. The rains didn’t come again, so even though we’ve got plenty of farm gear to plant with, we can only use land we can irrigate.”

The admiral paused to catch a tired breath. “Someone put sand and gravel, even some large stones, in the intake for the viaduct. We got most of the big junk out, but we couldn’t get it all. We’re a good ten percent down on our water flow.”

Kitano glanced offscreen as if looking for words. “We’ve tried talking to them, but all we get is a stubborn insistence that we go back to the way things were. We tell them that there are aliens coming to really mess with their world, but they say they’ve heard enough of that, I think the word they use is something like ‘fairy tale.’ There are a whole lot of us down here about ready to pull our hair out. If that could be done, I think your friend Armstrong would be bald.”

“There have been some ugly incidents between the Alwans that follow the Associations and those that live in the deep woods. So far it’s just pecking at each other, but Granny Rita says she expects bodies to be found any morning now. Sorry to dump this on you just as you’re chasing off after my screwup. If you want my head, I’ll hand in my resignation. I hope you’ll let me keep the P Royal, she’s a sweet ship. Kitano, out.”

And the screen went dead.

“And I thought we had problems,” Kris muttered.