Tenacious

38

The steaks were good, and it gave Kris a chance to lay a proposal before Captain Taussig.

“Captain, there was no way that I could allow Sampson and a mutinous crew to take the Sisu back to human space. However, there is the matter of you and your crew’s survivor leave. We’re a good bit of the way across the galaxy. Would you like to take your ship the rest of the way?”

“Excuse me if I’m missing something, but why me and not them?” he said around a nice rare piece of dead cow.

“I can keep these aliens across the system off your tail,” Kris said. “Turnabout being fair play.”

“That would be much obliged,” he admitted.

“But if you did get caught, I trust you would blow the reactor and give them nothing.”

Phil Taussig leaned back in his chair. “We didn’t blow the reactors last time because there was hardly anything left to blow. We did destroy our computers. I don’t know if you noticed that.”

“I figured you did, but I didn’t have time to check it out,” Kris admitted.

“Yes, if we got caught, I’d blow the reactors. After seeing that house of horror, there is no way I want my head or body in their trophy room.”

“Do you want to go? If you do, I’ll send along a full report of what we found.”

“Do you think that would make any difference in the way your great-grandfather, my king, is building ships?”

“I can’t say that it would. I can’t say that it wouldn’t,” Kris admitted.

“So, it boils down to the original question. Do I and mine want to take this chance to get off the tip of the spear and back someplace that might or might not be safer?”

“Yes.”

“No,” he said right back.

“No?”

“No. No way. No how, Kris. Admiral. Viceroy, whomever I’m talking to. We’re out here, and we’ll stay out here, if you don’t mind.”

“I’m always glad to have fighting skippers,” Kris admitted.

“Kris, I have a message from Dr. Meade to you,” Nelly said.

“What does she have to say?”

“The examination Lieutenant Commander Sampson had earlier was very cursory. She’s just completed a full body scan, and the woman has a cancerous brain tumor. It’s a rapidly growing one, and she’s glad she managed to catch it right now. In another week or two, it would have been inoperable.”

“You may have just saved that woman’s life,” Penny said.

Kris considered that for a long moment. “I wish I could say that I felt better about that,” she finally admitted.

“I’ll wait to see how she acts when the tumor’s gone,” Taussig said. “There are bad actors, then there are people with an excuse for acting bad.”

They ate in silence for a while on that thought.

“Kris, would you like an update on the new alien planet?”

“Thank you, Nelly,” Kris said, then explained to the others at the table with her, “I’ve had her hold reports on the new aliens until we settled this problem with Sampson. I take it that the nasty aliens are still staying put, Nelly?”

“If they so much as budge, you will hear, even if you and Jack are . . .”

“Thank you, Nelly,” Kris interrupted.

“You’re welcome, Kris.”

Around the table, Penny was in a coughing fit. “Sorry, I was drinking when Nelly started giving way too much information.”

The recent defense counsel finished by taking a long drink of water.

“You may report now, Nelly,” Kris said, when Penny was settled and the rest were no longer looking at her and Jack in that most familiar way.

“We flung off a probe before we finished braking. It will use the fifth planet to brake before going into orbit around the fourth. The boffins are trying to use as much natural slowing as they can to avoid any bright lights. They suspect this civilization has enough technology to notice a sudden bright light in the sky.”

“I wonder what they’ll make of a fight between us and the bug-eyed monsters?” Taussig asked no one.

Nelly had mastered the rhetorical question. She let it go.

“The probe is not there yet, but the fourth planet is throwing off enough electronic media for us to do a major analysis of them without putting anything on the ground. There are several wars raging right now. It appears that the planet is just coming out of a colonial period. Do I need to explain what that is?”

“No, Nelly,” Kris said. “We all know what it means when folks one place think they should tell folks some other place how to run their lives.”

“The wars right now are being waged using conventional weapons, but, Kris, these people have fissionable atomics for power and hydrogen-enriched atomics for weapons.”

“Oh, so our bug-eyed monsters do indeed have a hot one on their hands,” Jack said, with a chuckle.

“And they have chemical weapons, too,” Nelly added. “Several of the larger armies have access to nerve gas and have fighting uniforms designed to handle the problem of it on the battlefield.”

“This just gets better and better,” Penny said. “Who are these people?”

“From the looks of them, we think they evolved from something more like an Earth feline. They have peaked ears, furry faces, and several still have tails.”

“The aliens found themselves a batch of tigers,” Taussig said. “And they sound like they’re at the technological level of the late twentieth century. Back at the Academy, I took a course on that century. It was such a train wreck that I couldn’t turn away from it. Some of our best alien-invasion literature dates back to that time. They spent a lot of their time scared, and space aliens were about the scariest thing around. That and zombies.”

“Zombies?” Kris said.

“Living-dead things,” Taussig said, “And don’t ask me how they square that circle.”

“Living dead,” Kris repeated.

“I have pictures,” Nelly said.

“Don’t,” came from everyone at the table.

“Now, about our feline aliens,” Kris said, “who appear to be armed to the teeth?”

“They are divided up into a hundred and fifty-seven different competing districts. Some much larger than the others. Some much more powerful than the others. Three appear to be dominant. Two share a similar language and call their planet Sasquan,” Nelly said.

“Well, if they are as combative as you say,” Jack asked, “why haven’t the larger ones taken over the smaller ones?”

“Some of the smaller ones can be quite nasty if you invade their territory. Do I need to explain guerrilla warfare?” Nelly asked.

“Oh, good Lord,” Penny said. “They’ve got that going on down there? Even when you win a war, you don’t win it. It never ends until you finally get smart and go home.”

“Something like that.”

“So let me sum it up,” Kris said. “Our big, bad, bug-eyed monsters have stumbled upon a really nasty bunch of cats that might just give them the fight of their life and not quit even when they’re beaten. I can’t think of a better future for them.”

“You all notice they are not tackling them,” Nelly said.

“I have one question that has been bothering me,” Taussig said, putting down his fork. “How come the BEMs are here? This is a long way from where we whipped their mother ship. How’d they get here?”

“Nelly, that sounds like a very interesting question,” Kris said.

“I already ran the necessary jumps, Kris, and I don’t much care for what they show. I was waiting for a better time to ruin your dinner.”

“Good turn of phrase, Nelly. My dinner is already ruined, I think. Finish it up.”

“If the defeated aliens cut across the Alwa System at one-gee acceleration, they would have hit our Jump Point Beta at about the right speed for a long jump, assuming they used at least ten RPMs at the jump and goosed it up to two gees.”

“I don’t like where this is going,” Jack said.

Penny grimaced. “We know where it’s going. Right here.”

Nelly waited for the chatter to die down, then went on. “They took four slower jumps to duplicate our one high-speed jump, but if they accelerated through two of them and began decelerating, they would have ended up here.”

“So the aliens know how to take long jumps?” Kris said.

“Yes, Kris. Apparently they don’t risk them with their mother ship, but the warships can do them.”

Captain Taussig was shaking his head. “There goes your twelve-jump-point-out warning system,” he said. “They can jump directly into Alwa from way out.”

“But,” Nelly quickly put in, “they will be coming in at several hundred thousand kilometers an hour. They would need the entire system to slow down, and maybe then some. They would have no fighting capability in that situation.”

“Maybe they wouldn’t want any,” Kris said. “Back in the Unity War, something like those almost wiped out Wardhaven. They were going to use relativity bullets. Huge iron slugs traveling at .05 or so percent of the speed of light can make a hell of a mess when they hit.”

“Like the bullets that hit the insectoid planet one out from the aliens’ home world?” Penny said.

“Exactly. Let’s say those speedsters they’ve got get themselves up to a really high velocity and don’t try to slow down before they hit Alwa. Or any human or Iteeche planet. Even this one.”

“I love you, Kris Longknife,” Jack said, “but you can come up with some of the most horrific ideas.”

“I didn’t come up with this one. It’s in our history books.”

“Jack, you’ve got to do something about her bookshelf,” Phil Taussig said.

“You try getting this woman to do anything she doesn’t want to do,” was Jack’s quick answer.

That got him nods of understanding.

“Getting back to our alien situation, and not all about me for a moment,” Kris said, “do all the aliens have this kind of knowledge, or just the one we scared into running away from us as far and as fast as they could?”

“She may have a point there,” Penny said. “They were running scared. Not just from us. Who knows what was coming down on them for not going with the rest and hunting up a horde that would take them in. Conflict management and resolution doesn’t strike me as their strong suit.”

“No, conflict avoidance seems to be their preferred way of living,” Kris agreed.

“And we know that the last time we passed Alwa,” Jack said, “it was still there.”

“We also know that the critters across the system from us haven’t rocked the critters down system from us.”

“Smart move. I wouldn’t piss off those kitties until I was real sure I could take them.”

“Does anyone wonder if there’s another mother ship headed this way to take out the, what do they call themselves, Sasquans?” Penny asked.

“At least in two of their zones,” Nelly said, answering one question.

“That is a possibility,” Kris admitted to the other question, “but they are a long way from their usual stomping grounds. There’s another thing. I could be wrong, but bragging rights for wiping out a planet seemed to be a big thing. Nelly, get Jacques on the line.”

“You called, Kris?”

“Do the alien ships claim bragging rights for the planets they kill?”

“Most definitely. They count the number they’ve bagged, like notches on their belt. There was a notation, not in stone, but in pigment, that we managed to read bragging that one ship had five and another ship only had four. By the way, those two weren’t even the high scorers. One had nine, but I think it may be the original ship, and it didn’t seem to need to brag.”

“In your opinion, if the aliens across the system from us didn’t join another horde, what are the chances they’d call in another ship to handle this planet?”

“Pretty low. No guarantee I’d be right. Understanding these aliens is a study in progress, and likely to be for a long time, assuming we don’t kill each other first.”

“I understand where you’re coming from, Professor. Thank you for your informed opinion,” Kris said, and rang off.

“Which leaves me,” Kris said, “with one big problem. Do we tiptoe out of this system and mark it on our map for later examination, or do we do something now?”

The table got very quiet.

“Thank you all very much,” Kris said. “Phil, can the Hornet do without you for a bit?”

“Hey, I’m just the captain. If we’re just swinging around the anchor here, she’s probably better off without me.”

“Have I told you how well you lie?” Kris said.

“My family’s been Navy for five hundred years or more, Admiral, of course we tell good sea stories. Or space stories.”

“I think they’re still sea stories,” Jack said. “So the rest of us can say, ‘Oh, I see,’ as you pull our legs.”

“Whatever works.”

“Nelly, get my key staff, and that includes Professor Labao as well as Amanda and Jacques. If I’m going to put my nose into a hornet’s nest, I want the most informed guesses I can get beforehand.”

“Hornets! I know a lot about hornets!” the skipper of the last two Hornets said through a grin.

They adjourned to Kris’s day cabin.