“Nothing, except that when confronted with a battle fleet, they still shot first and answered no questions,” Kris said, summing up the aliens in few words.
“I do not understand them,” Abby said, shaking her head.
“From the evidence,” the colonel went on, “I would say they are either intent on destroying any life that isn't theirs, or there is something else a whole lot worse out here that they are afraid of, and they think we might be from it. Any of you see another way to interpret the data?”
“If there's a bigger monster out there,” Kris said, shaking her head, “wouldn't they be trying like we are to make a peaceful contact? Gain allies. My guess, Colonel, is that these folks like the galaxy their way and don't want to share it with any other life-form.”
“I can't dispute your conclusion,” the colonel said with a sad shake of his head.
“One more thought,” Penny put in, as the silence after that conclusion grew long and ponderous. “Nelly, could you play the video where we hit one of their ships but didn't destroy it.”
The video changed to show one of their giant ships, hit hard in the engines by the
Fearless
and drifting. It continued to fire wildly. Almost a minute went by before its reactors blew, and the ship was vaporized.
“Notice what we didn't see?” Penny asked.
“Survival pods,” Kris said.
“Right. No one abandoned ship. They fought it as long as they were able, then someone in command ordered selfdestruct, and the entire ship blew. They must have known for a whole minute that it was doomed, but no one abandoned ship. Furthermore, there was no reason to blow that ship. We were losing. It could have hung in there and been rescued by its own ships once the fight was over. It didn't.”
“Dear God,” Abby said in one of her rare references to any being greater than herself. “Victory or death. If they can't return on their shield, they will damn well blow up the shield,” she said, misquoting the Spartan mother.
“And these nutcases just had to share our galaxy,” Jack grumbled. “I can't tell you how happy I expect your grampas to be when we get home and drop this flaming hot potato right in their laps.”
“They won't be glad,” Kris said, “but they'll have to do something about this. They can't ignore it.”
“Ever heard of that fine old tradition about killing the messenger?” the colonel tossed out.
On that fine thought, Kris headed up to the bridge to see how things were developing there. The view was spectacular, but hard to figure out.
How an old red giant and a young blue giant could now share the system with a white dwarf probably could be explained by a series of collisions. Kris had been told by the boffins that such driving accidents were frequent in the jumbled-up systems at the center of the galaxy.
How it happened out on the rim was a question Kris would hand off to the astronomers just as soon as she found one.
She shivered as she remembered that Professor mFumbo and so many other of the boffins she'd shared meals with and survived lectures from were either dead or had taken the early ship back to human space.
“Nelly, where did Judge Francine go?”
“Kris, she went aboard the
Triumph
with Admiral Channing.”
Which meant she was still running or had been gunned down already.
Kris groaned inwardly. There was no way to know what happened until they got back and allowed enough time for the others to get back.
A voice in the back of her head refused to be placated.
You know they're already dead. Maybe the
Wasp
can get home, but none of the rest will. You lost almost your entire first command.
Kris did not need to spend more time sitting on her rear listening to the voices in the back of her head.
Fortunately, the
Wasp
needed a lot of work, the kind that took Swedish steam. Strong arms and strong back. No brains required.
Kris turned to with a will.
The
Wasp
continued to decelerate, running at only a half gee by then. The chief engineer had taken one of the reactors off-line and had cooled half the rocket engines. Engineers and anyone fully qualified in space were crawling all over the engines identifying what had had it and pulling subunits where there was any chance that replacements were in stock or repairs could be made.
It turned out that there was a good reason why the
Wasp
had taken on all those sailors during the last few stops by Wardhaven. Her enlarged crew knew quite a bit about ship maintenance and set about doing it under the watchful eye of her skipper, officers, and chiefs.
And Kris found that her strange career path had deprived her of the opportunity to learn a whole lot about running a ship.
About the second time that Captain Drago tried to find something that she could do and came up dry, she gave up on working for a living and went hunting for the other folks who were mere passengers on this ship of fools. There was no Forward Lounge left, but Iteeche country still had a large room.
Kris called her staff together, with Vicky added, and settled down around a table with Ron.
“This is a fine mess you have gotten us into,” he told her through his translator.
“You were the one losing ships and asked us to help,” Kris pointed out.
“We were hoping to find out what was happening to our ships, not to get into a war with one monster of a civilization,” he said, but then he shrugged. “If we were honest with ourselves, we must have known that we could find something like this.
“When I bring this report into His Majesty's presence, I may well be offered the Cup of Apology,” the Iteeche went on. “But they will be hiding the truth from themselves in a polluted pond.”
“Why is it that you and Kris are assuming that you'll be in trouble for this battle?” Vicky asked. “You did your best, and it needed doing. We all agreed on that. Well, we all did except my admiral, and I think he was just chicken.”
“Maybe they feel this way because they have read a little bit of history,” Colonel Cortez said. “What's the old saying? No good deed goes unpunished.”
Kris and her team spent the afternoon reviewing the battle for Ron the Iteeche and Grand Duchess Vicky. The two had little to add to what Kris had already concluded. They came, they saw, they got their butts kicked and got a couple of good kicks in themselves. Kris did her best to avoid putting a spin on any of it. One of the reasons she chose the Navy for a career was because she hated the way Father spun everything.
The walk back to the wardroom for supper was a harrowing experience. Welders were everywhere, adding patches to strengthen this or that portion of the hull. The chief had warned Kris that the
Wasp
was never designed for cloud dancing.
Clearly, the skipper was doing his very best to shore up those deficiencies.
Kris got a fuller briefing over supper when Captain Drago joined them.
“Before we deploy the balloot, I'm going to detach all of the shipping containers we've been carrying. That means a lot less room, Your Highness. I'm going to have to ask you to let your maid and her niece move in with you.”
“What will you do with the Iteeche?” Kris asked.
“Something very careful,” the skipper answered with a sigh. “I've also got welders outside cutting several of the spare containers into strips that we can use to reinforce the hull before we make the refueling pass. We'll have more reinforcing strips and welders handy during the refueling pass to patch what comes apart.”
“Will it be that bad?” Jack asked.
“As your chief no doubt informed you, ships like the
Wasp
were never intended to do this kind of cloud dancing. However, if we want to make it home, we must refuel. I've got several of the best ship maintainers reviewing the design of the
Wasp
and identifying its weak points. We'll strengthen them now and have teams standing by as we make the fuel run to patch holes and shore up problems. Nevertheless, all hands will be in pressure suits for the pass,” the captain added dryly.
“Not too optimistic, huh,” the colonel observed.
“I serve with a Longknife. I parked my optimism in a locker back on Wardhaven. Once I'm done here, I'll check it back out, dust it off, and enjoy it for the rest of my natural life. But no, not today.”
“What can we do?” Kris asked.
“Not a lot, Your Highness. The ship's crew has matters well in hand. When we start the pass, though, I would appreciate it if you and your team would form a damage-control detail.”
“Could you use Nelly or one of her kids to help with the ship-strength-analysis efforts?” Kris asked.
“If you'll excuse me,” Captain Drago said, getting up from the table with his meal only half-eaten, “I'd prefer to place my faith in men and material that have been trained and selected for this job. No doubt Nelly is superb at pulling things out of her nonexistent hat for this or that unforeseen emergency. Still, for this, I'll do things the old-fashioned way, thank you very much.”
“Yes, of course,” Kris said.
I COULD HAVE TOLD YOU HE'D SAY THAT, Nelly told Kris in the privacy of her own skull. I ALREADY OFFERED HIM A HAND AND HE PASSED.
THANK YOU, NELLY, Kris thought back.
As the hours stretched, and no alien ship came shooting into the system, Kris began to relax. They seemed to have slipped their pursuers. She tried not to think of what that meant for Phil Taussig and the
Hornet
's crew.
That night, even sharing her room with Abby and Cara, Kris slept the repose of the dead. Until about midnight, when she woke up to the soft sounds of someone's crying.
Kris had given Abby the lower bunk and had taken for herself the top bunk, something that usually stayed folded away into the bulkhead. Cara had a blanket on the floor. Awoken, Kris found that her maid's niece had crawled in to share Abby's bed and was crying softly onto a shoulder.
“Hush now,” Abby whispered with more softness than Kris would have expected from her hard-bitten maid as she stroked the girl's hair. She spotted Kris looking over the side of the top bunk.
“Don't worry. She's not awake. In a little while, she'll settle back down. She won't remember a thing in the morning.”
Kris rolled over back into her bunk. During the day, Cara showed no ill effects from her time as a drug lord's slave. Kris hadn't known about the nights. So this was why Abby had been so adamant her niece would not be left behind.
The weeping subsided into soft kitten snores; Kris curled up with her pillow and drifted back to sleep.
The next day, Kris's stateroom was detached along with all the other shipping containers. Everyone reported to the spindle of the
Wasp
in full battle suit or pressure suit, depending on what their battle stations required, and prepared to sweat out the near approach to one small ice giant.
47
Kris had flown through some rough air. She was totally unprepared for what the
Wasp
got into next.
She had some inkling when Command Master Chief Mong dropped by to tell her that she and her team would be spending the pass in a specific hull section. A welder 2/c would be responsible for the compartment, and he hoped Kris would see that her officers didn't get underfoot.
Kris and her team of officers reported to their hull section to find that the second-class petty officer had the situation well in hand. Strips cut from containers were ready to shore up anything that bent, and a full set of welding tools was on hand to secure them.
No surprise, there were plenty of cans of stop-leak Goo at hand.
Certainly, Wardhaven procurement had another name for Goo, but the gooey stuff you sprayed at a leak in the hull that sealed it temporarily was known to all and sundry as simply Goo.
When Sulwan announced to prepare for some rough sailing, there was nothing in Kris's space that wasn't tied, lashed, or welded down.
Except the people.
But the petty officer had a plan for them, too.
“You two,” she said, pointing at Kris and Jack, “over against that wall.”
They went.
“You sir, put your back against the wall. You ma'am. Out here. Put your feet against his. Yeah, I figured you'd be well past midpoint with those long, thin sticks you two got,” was not the normal reference Kris was used to getting for her legs.
“You, too, small one,” she said, pointing at Abby and Cara. Kris would never have used the word “small” for her maid. She was usually moving so fast you had to give her lots of extra space. At the moment, through the petty officer's eyes, Kris realized that Abby was of less-than-average build.
Kris found herself with her back to Abby. When the maid and Cara pushed their feet together, Kris felt locked in place.
“Will this hold?” Kris asked.
“If it don't, you can write a letter of complaint to the old chief who taught me the trick. If you all don't intend to lay a hand if we need one, then I guess I could lash you down like you was kids, ma'am, but I was told you're going to help if things go all to hell in a handbasket.”
“Yes,” Kris said, “we're here to lay a hand.”
“Then I expect this will do.”
The others found a place in such a line athwart the deck and settled in to wait.
They didn't have long.
The
Wasp
started getting downright frisky very quickly.
Sulwan was kind enough to pass The Word. “All hands, we're getting into the outer fringe of the atmosphere. It's not enough to give us any reaction mass, but it is enough to make the ride interesting. Hold on to your best friend and enjoy the ride.”