Undaunted

4

Kris found the bridge more organized than when she’d left. Sulwan was at her usual nav station on the left. Penny sat to the right of the main screen, her finger only millimeters away from the fire button. The Iteeche was centered in her sights.

Her gravity sights. Penny had discovered the discrepancy and made the same call as the chief.

Kris took a deep breath. “Captain Drago, I have a computer problem,” and quickly explained why Nelly had been so quiet of late. It drew low whistles from several of the bridge crew.

“So, Captain, any suggestions as to how we keep Nelly from taking over control and blasting targets we don’t want blasted?”

There was a lengthy pause before the captain shook his head. “We could drain our laser capacitors, make her take time to charge the guns before she fired.”

“Would you like to do that with an Iteeche Death Ball off your port quarter?” Kris asked.

“Not really. Very much not really.”

“Penny, can you get your station to answer only manual input?”

“My station, yes. But the pulse lasers, I’m not so sure. It’s not like this is something we designed for.”

“Tell me about that.” Kris sighed. “Is there any manual intervention at the laser we could do? Pull the plug, maybe?”

But Captain Drago was already shaking his head. “That’s big power, ma’am. Those plugs are screwed in solid.”

“My old man,” the chief said slowly, “insisted there’s no invention that is sailor-proof.” That got tight grins around the bridge. “What if Lieutenant Pasley pointed each of the four lasers as far away as she could from the Iteeche?”

“That would give us some warning if Nelly took them over and started dialing them in, but not a lot.”

“Yes, ma’am. But if each laser had a gunner standing by with a wooden wedge and a hammer to stop it from training, ma’am . . .”

“Chief, you are a genius.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, turning beet red, “but I think this proves I should stay a chief. Officers don’t do real work like this.”

“You’re probably right,” Kris said, with the first chuckle she’d felt like this morning. “Captain Drago,” she said, nodding his way.

It took the captain only a moment to issue the orders to the gun crew. It took longer to explain the order and assure his gunners that he really might want them to disable their weapons because the Iteeche off their stern could be less of a danger than the vaunted computer around their princess’s neck.

It took less time for them to report their lasers ready to be spiked.

Taking a deep breath, Captain Drago turned to Kris. “The Iteeche are still waiting for a reply. They won’t wait forever.”

Kris pushed Nelly’s on/off spot.

The silence between Kris’s ears continued for a lengthening moment. Kris had time to start to worry.

YOU TURNED ME OFF!

YES, I DID. I COULDN’T HAVE YOU STARTING A WAR WITH THE PETERWALDS!

YOU WOULD RISK CARA’S LIFE!

NELLY, I’VE RISKED A LOT OF LIVES. AND A LOT OF PEOPLE HAVE DIED TO KEEP THIS PEACE. I DON’T START WARS. YOU DON’T START WARS. IF IT EVER HAPPENS, IT WILL BE KING RAY’S CALL. NOT YOURS. NOT MINE.

AND, NELLY, WE WON’T DO IT FOR A TWELVE-YEAR-OLD Girl.

KRIS, YOU ARE A BASTARD.

CERTIFIABLY, Nelly, AS is EVERYONE IN MY fAMIlY. BUT THOSE WHO WORK FOR US WILL OBEY US. JACK OBEYS Me. ABBY OBEYS ME. PENNY OBEYS ME. IF YOU WANT TO STAY ON OUR TEAM, YOU WILL OBEY ME.

SO YOU’RE DRAFTING ME. NO CHOISE.

JUST LIKE I WAS DRAFTED INTO THE LONGKNIFE FAMILY. NO CHOICE. WELL, NO, YOU HAVE A CHOICE. YOU CAN QUIT WORKING WITH ME. SIT IN A CORNER AND POUT. CAUSE ME TROUBLE AND GET TURNED OFF AGAIN.

I NOTICE THAT The PETERWALD cruisers are Gone.

I TalkeD TheM inTo sToppinG Their SHOOTING AND GETTING The hell ouT of My sky.

BuT we sTill haVe an ITEECHE DEATH Ball off our rear enD.

Yes, Nelly, anD iT SENT us a MessaGe. I Don’T Think There’s anyone on BOARD BETTER aBle To TRANSLATE Than you.

You neeD Me.

Yes, I Do.

AND WHAT if The ITeeche sTarTs SHOOTING aT us?

I will DECIDe if we RETURN fire.

HUMANS are Very slow, Kris.

I know, BUT HUMANS are The ones THAT will Die if we LET a war GET STATED.

My EXISTENCE MIGHT cease if you GET This BOAT Blown To pieces.

Yes, Nelly, THAT’s The risk you Take when you SIGN on WITH a LONGKNIFE.

BUT I DIDN’T SIGN on. I was DRAFTED.

Like Jack.

Yeah. When are you GOING To Tell HIM how Much you like HIM?

Nelly, we HAVE an ITEECHE who WANTS a reply To his, her, or ITS MessaGe.

They’re NOT an IT. They’re Boys AND Girls, like you AND Jack. JUST DifferenT. I COULD show you PICTURES

Nelly, TRANSLATE THAT MESSAGE.

“Yes, your slavedriverness,” Nelly said out loud.

“Translate,” Kris said for the bridge crew’s information.

It was only a second before Nelly said. “The message appears to be in High Imperial Iteeche, honored equal to honored equal of middle rank.”

“That highfalutin,” Captain Drago said.

“There are only two higher forms of address,” Nelly said.

“Superior equal to superior equal and superior unequal to the Imperium. There are a lot lower.”

“What’s he say?” Kris asked. “Once you get past the grammar.” Grammar had caused the deaths of several early attempts to start talks. The Iteeche criminals initially captured did not give humans nearly the right structure, vocabulary, and declensions.

Words can hurt you a lot more than sticks and stones if you’re talking to an Iteeche snob.

“The basic message seems to be three versions of the same simple message. “Honored Lordling, I come in peace. I mean you no harm. Great warrior, please don’t shoot anymore.”

“Then why’d they come all this way in an Iteeche Death Sphere?” Colonel Cortez asked.

“My thoughts exactly,” Captain Drago said.

Kris frowned at the Iteeche ship as it trailed them. In the captured Iteeche records, it was called a Death Sphere and was easily the equal of either of the light cruisers that had attacked it. At this close a range, the twenty-four-inch pulse lasers of the Wasp could cut it in half. Leaving Kris to wonder if the much-vaunted Iteeche electronic sensors knew that the apparent merchant ship in front of them was anything but.

“Interesting,” Kris said. “I’ve turned an unarmed merchant ship into a warship. Could some Iteeche lord be touring around in a disarmed warship for a yacht?”

“They’re militaristic enough to like that,” Penny said, speaking from her intelligence training for the first time this morning.

“Chief, you have anything more to tell us about that warship?” Kris asked.

“Only that it’s got me totally jammed on any frequency that might tell me anything. Those three nacelles evenly spaced around the ball have got the same reactors in them that the Death Balls had in the war. I can’t read what’s in the forward half of those nacelles, but I’d bet my next paycheck that they wouldn’t be jamming me if there wasn’t something nasty they didn’t want us to know.”

“My thoughts, too,” Kris said.

“Nelly, please translate this very carefully. Use the words they sent where possible. ‘Honored Lordling, if you mean us no harm. If you do not want any more shooting, why did you come here in a warship like a great warrior?’ ”

“Ah, Kris, the message had no signature attached. I don’t know who we’re dealing with.”

“Nelly, the chances of us running into a head-high Iteeche with really long claws is about the same as this fellow running into a Wardhaven princess. Play it equal to equal.”

“Yes, Your Highness. But if I am right, you are going to be the one eating crow . . . or being eaten by crows. Of an honorable level in the pecking order.”

“That’s a chance I’ll just have to take,” Kris said, and found most of the bridge crew giving her weird looks. “What’s the matter, you’ve heard me and Nelly argue before. There’s nothing new about her talking back. Really.”

Heads shook slowly. The looks didn’t go away.

“Her jokes certainly haven’t gotten any better,” Captain Drago drawled.

At Kris’s neck, Nelly cleared her nonexistent throat. “I told you, Kris, you really need to upgrade the computers of the people around you. They’d be much more productive.”

“Shut up and send my message,” Kris ordered.

Nelly shut up, and Kris turned away from the screen. Maybe Nelly had a point. Maybe Kris would get some respect if the rest of this bunch had to deal with something like Nelly twenty-four hours a day. Certainly not Nelly. How many Nellys could the Wasp handle before it became totally dysfunctional?

Today, one was too many.

“Message sent,” Nelly reported.

Kris stood behind Penny’s fire-control station. All four lasers continued to be aimed at four different sections of empty space. At her station, Sulwan held her finger ever so lightly on the shields’ button. A flinch and the Smart Metal™ umbrella would come up on the aft quarter.

“I’ve got a messenger pod flashing,” Sulwan said, not taking her eyes off her board or her finger off shields.

“I ordered Abby to load what we know about the Iteeche and get it on the way to Wardhaven soonest,” Kris said. “Since the Greenwald cruisers vaporized our jump buoy, a messenger pod looks like the best way to get the news out. Can you launch it without its looking like a threat to the Iteeche?”

Sulwan kept her eyes riveted to her board. “Chief, plot a course to the jump that even a paranoid Iteeche wouldn’t find threatening.”

“I didn’t know that Iteeche got paranoid,” the chief said as he used the sensor board to plot a course that stayed wide of the Death Ball.

“My pappy swore every swimming one of them was hatched that way,” Colonel Cortez offered.

“I want that pod out of here,” Kris said.

The chief proposed a course, Kris and Drago accepted it, and Sulwan uploaded it to the pod.

“We heard anything from the Iteeche?” Kris asked.

“Nope,” came from the chief and Nelly.

“Launch,” Captain Drago said, and the pod rocked away at four gees acceleration, heading up and out from the sun and slowly arcing around toward the jump.

Kris found a seat. The Iteeche were taking more time than she liked. “I thought with us using mostly their own words, this wouldn’t take so long,” she muttered. “What’s taking them?”

One of the nacelles on the Death Ball lit up.

The messenger pod vanished.

Sulwan hit the shields button.

Captain Drago pursed his lips. “Which of you was it that suggested the Iteeche might be riding around in a former warship? I think we can scratch the ‘former’ part of that.”

Kris, why are all our lasers POINTED anywhere BUT AT The ITEECHE?

Because I ORDERED THEM. We Don’T fire unless I say we fire.

I Don’T like THAT. DID you happen To NOTICE ThaT They FIRED on our MESSENGER POD.

I NOTICED, AND I Don’T like IT. BUT I’M NOT GOING To START a war OVER IT.

Well, I hope you noTice when They START a war, ’cause I’D sure HATE To Be The LAST To FIND OUT.

“There’s a message coming in from the Iteeche,” the chief announced.