The captain clearly was also thinking along that line. “Sulwan, if we went to half a gee acceleration?”
“The Engineering team would be delighted, and we'd still be making some two hundred thousand klicks an hour when we hit the next jump.”
“That might get us two of those long jumps. Course, we might need to give up showers and flushing the toilet to find enough reaction mass to slow down.”
“Our final jump might also have us dropping into the Iteeche Empire or one of those systems where their ships have been vanishing,” the skipper said slowly.
“Choices, choices,” Kris said. “Who shall we start a war with today?”
“That is not funny, Kris,” Jack said.
“I didn't mean it as a joke,” Kris said. “At least if we drop in on the Empire, we've got our own Imperial Representative.”
“Who, I understand, is not in good repute at the court just now,” the skipper said.
“Where'd you hear that?” Kris asked.
“I know everything that goes on aboard my ship,” the captain said darkly. “And if I don't, I have supper every once in a while with Abby, and she fills me in on what I missed.”
“And here I thought I didn't have to worry about that woman leaking now that I wasn't going to balls anymore.”
“It's a fact of life with your maid,” the skipper said. “If she doesn't leak something, she'll pop.”
“Now who's cracking jokes,” Nelly said.
“I'm a human. I get to crack jokes. You're a computer. I worry about the jokes you might crack. I'm not all that sure they'll be funny.”
“I am learning from an expert.” Nelly sniffed.
“Who?” the captain demanded.
“Kris,” Nelly said.
“I rest my case. Now, why don't you two, or three, run along and get some chow and take a shower. I may be cutting back on both in the very near future.”
“Isn't our water recycled?” Nelly asked.
“Yes. I'm more worried with the beer, wine, and spirits that are still on board. Is it better to allow them to be recycled into piss, or should I pour them directly into the reaction tanks?”
“I knew there was a reason I left you in command of this wreck,” Kris said.
“She wasn't a wreck when you left me in command. We had to work real hard to get her into this fix.”
Kris let the skipper have the last word. She headed for chow, only to find that even Cookie was having a hard time making what he had in his larder look all that worth eating. A request for any of the crew qualified in space to lend a hand shoring up damaged compartments got her attention, and she was about to tap her commlink and ask Captain Drago to let her get in some honest work when Jack put his hand over her commlink.
“I know what you're thinking, and I will not have you squished like a little green bug because some rough-cut steel gets out of control of a teenage sailor.”
“In our situation, everyone has to do their part. I should, too,” Kris insisted.
“That's what worries me. Every seaman recruit who thinks they know how to handle themselves in a half gee is headed there. I know that Senior Chief Mong knows how to handle things. I'm worried about Marine Private Knucklehead or Seaman Recruit Vacuum-for-brains who has more enthusiasm than experience.”
Jack paused, then went on. “You and I need to find someplace private where we can talk.”
“About what?” Kris asked, suddenly not sure she liked the idea that she had nothing to do, and Jack was going to have a talk with her. From the thunderclouded look on his face, he'd been saving this up for a long time.
“Let's find someplace we won't be interrupted,” was all he said.
They ended up back in the space they had occupied for the refueling pass. Everyone seemed to have gone elsewhere, leaving them a large, empty space all to themselves.
Once there, Jack went to one side of the compartment. Kris found herself gravitating to the opposite end of the room, as far from Jack as she could get.
The space still smelled of hot welding and Goo, along with human sweat and a bit of terror. There was no place to sit, and with the
Wasp
changing its course and acceleration at odd moments as it matched orbit with its containers, Kris found herself holding on to one of the tie-downs that still held its bottle of Goo.
Finally, she turned to face Jack. “What's eating you?”
“This lust you have for getting yourself killed,” he snapped.
“I didn't have any good choices,” Kris said in her defense. “I couldn't let the bird people die when I could do something about it. I thought you agreed with me.”
Jack was shaking his head before she finished. “I didn't say your enthusiasm for getting us all killed, I said
your
personal lust for getting your own little body slammed, smashed, and burned before my eyes.”
“Oh,” Kris said.
This was going to be personal.
She would have preferred to argue about what she'd done for the whole human race. Talking about herself . . . now that could bring up a whole mess of snakes Kris preferred to ignore.
“I haven't done anything lately, Jack. Nobody has thrown a bomb at me or taken a shot at me. Vicky has more of that coming at her than I do of late.”
“Quit changing the subject, Kris,” Jack snapped. “I've been biting my tongue and keeping my silence ever since we got ourselves stuck in a burning aircraft with a canopy that wouldn't open.”
“Oh,” Kris whispered. “That time I almost got us both killed.”
“Yes,
that
time,” Jack said. “I woke up with the smell of smoke in my oxygen system and you not answering my calls and a canopy that wouldn't budge. All I could think of was that you'd finally gone and done it, gotten yourself killed, and my heart was breaking.”
“Heart?” Kris whispered. Was Jack really talking about something intimate to the two of them, not just a day in, day out job?
“Don't change the subject,” Jack growled. “You didn't have to fly that mission. We could have given it to anyone. Hell, even a drone could have flown it.”
“A drone would not have dodged those missiles the way I did,” Kris said, jumping to her defense. “And besides, I saved your precious Marines when I saw what they were heading into.
I
saved most of
your
company.”
“There you go, changing the topic again.”
“Well, damn it, what is the topic, Jack!”
Jack took a deep breath before he went on. “I can't stand to watch you going out day after day trying to get yourself killed.”
“I'm not trying to get myself killed.”
“Well, it sure looks that way from where I'm standing,” Jack snarled.
“I do what I have to do,” Kris shot back.
“You do not!” came right back at her. “Any reasonable person, with the sense God promised a billy goat, would find other ways to get what she wants done that didn't involve her going out and sticking her head in every lion's mouth that comes along.”
Jack paused long enough to slam his hand against one of the metal patches they'd help weld to the
Wasp
's hide. At half a gee, his feet lifted off the deck, and he had to force himself back down.
“Kris, you do have choices. If I hear you say one more time that you don't have any choice but to go out and nearly get yourself killed, I'm going to scream. You have choices. If you'd spend a few extra seconds thinking about what you're about to do, you'd see those choices and maybe do something different.”
“Do them instead of trying my hand at flossing some passing lion's teeth, you mean,” Kris said, giving him the kind of look through her eyelashes that some actresses used to good effect.
“Don't you go trying to make me laugh,” Jack said, but a hint of a smile was creeping around the edges of his mouth.
“I like you when you smile,” Kris said.
“You're changing the subject.”
“Okay, I'll stay on your topic. What does it matter to you whether I'm one of those Longknifes that dies young and gloriously? From the look of Grampa Ray, I'm not sure that living a long life is all it's cracked up to be. He's getting way too good at dodging his problems and ignoring his conscience.”
“We are not talking about your relatives,” Jack said.
“Then answer my question. What does it matter whether I splatter myself over the next gas giant we come to, trying to get reaction mass for the
Wasp
? You won't be in the launch with me. You won't have to take my bullet. It will be just me and Nelly.”
“And I don't get a vote on the matter, either,” Nelly pointed out.
“You stay out of this,” both Kris and Jack said.
“Fine. Okay. I'm just the computer, but when are you going to answer the girl's question, Jack?” Nelly said.
Kris raised an eyebrow to add her own emphasis to Nelly's question.
Jack scowled and looked at the hatch like he wanted to walk out on the both of them. Down in Engineering, they were having trouble maintaining the acceleration. They'd pop up to more than half a gee, then just as suddenly fall well below it. If it was the engines, they were in trouble. If it was the quality of the new reaction mass, they might survive it. Whatever it was, Jack risked falling flat on his face if he tried stomping out on her.
He must have realized it about the time Kris did, because that tiny hint of a smile was back. Then he sobered up.
“I've had to watch you die twice in the last couple of months. First when we peeled what that bomb left of you off the marble floor on Texarkana. I had to do it again when I woke up ahead of you after you crashed”âKris started to object and Jack waved her backâ“after you did that superb bit of flying that set us down so smoothly in the middle of a swamp. My heart won't take much more of this.”
“I'm sorry I've stressed you,” Kris said curtly. “It wasn't all that much fun for me. And if I may point out, it was me helping you limp away from that Greenfeld pile of junk before it blew. My heart got a bit of a workout, too.”
Jack shook his head ruefully. “Right. Heart. It pumps blood as Nelly would tell you. Kris, I don't care what you do to my blood pressure or my pulse. That's all part of the job.”
He paused and took a deep breath. “Kris, I've made the worst mistake a bodyguard can make. I'm supposed to care for your body, but it's you I care about. And you keep right on breaking my heart.”
That wasn't something Kris saw coming.
Now it was her turn to talk, and nothing came to mind.
Nothing at all.
What she wanted to do was launch herself across the room at Jack. She had never wanted to bury herself in anyone's arms like she wanted his arms around her.
She didn't, of course. Halfway across the room, Engineering was likely to hiccup and drop Kris on the deck. Hard. Probably put her back on crutches.
Now wouldn't that be a fun one to explain to the
Wasp
's medical team?
And even if she did get across the room with no harm done, it just wouldn't do to have some sailor duck his head through the hatch to find the commodore and her Marine skipper locked in a romantic embrace.
Especially with her being one of those damn Longknifes.
Wouldn't do at all.
Damn!
“I'm sorry you feel that way,” came out sounding so lame.
“No, that's not what I mean,” Kris immediately countered her own words.
“Jack, did you have to pick now to drop this on me?” came across way too argumentative.
“You've been rather busy since you crashed into that mud bank, Kris. I haven't been able to get a word in edgewise.”
Kris chuckled wryly. “Yeah, you're right. Way too busy saving the world or destroying it.”
Jack shrugged.
“Jack, when we get back, do you think you and I could have a quiet dinner. Candlelit, maybe. Could we try to talk this out, because, you see, I don't know what I'd do if you weren't in my life.”
“Oh,” sounded like Jack was as surprised to hear that as Kris was that it had slipped out.
That one word hung in the air between them for quite a long time.
Kris couldn't tell if she was just starting to open her mouth, or Jack started first, but it didn't matter.
The hatch opened, and Colonel Cortez ducked his head in. “Oh, that's where you two are. We've been looking all over for you. Did you turn Nelly off?”
“No. I'm on. I'm just not taking messages,” Kris's computer answered.
“Oh,” the colonel said, clearly not understanding what this was all about.
“Jack was just counseling me on my risk-taking,” Kris said. “As usual, he thinks I'm in way over my head. And, as usual, he's right.”
“We can continue this later,” Jack said. “Like you said. When we get back to human space.”
“Good,” Kris said, through a dry throat and a pounding pulse. “I'd like that. You have some good points I should really take to heart.”
Jack raised an eyebrow at that.
“Engineering has solved the problem with the
Wasp
's new reaction mass. We should be settling down to a reliable halfgee acceleration,” Sulwan announced to all hands. “Now you can safely get some serious repair work under way. Sorry about asking for volunteers when it was too hazardous to do anything. Now, if you really are interested in some messy work, let us know.”
Jack eyed Kris.
“I'll pass on that,” she said.
49
The
Wasp
approached the next jump at over 150,000 kilometers an hour. She could have put on more speed, but she hadn't; they'd been forced to spend time in free fall.